Lion's Share

by Rochelle Rattner

  “Between your proposal and the biographical profiles of these artists, I think we have a solid game plan to take to the board,” he said. “Our board meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 18, and we should be able to let you know their decision shortly after that. If you don’t hear from us by the following Friday, give Ed a call.”

  Ed lingered for a moment after Frank left, as if to reestablish personal contact. He told the two women that, assuming the proposal went through, the funds would be disbursed in two payments. “It takes roughly a week to get the paperwork out once the decision’s been made, but we can cut the first check fairly quickly if you need money to get things under way.” He smiled as if the proposal were through already.

  By two o’clock Jana and Natalie were in a cab headed downtown, celebrating their success. Natalie returned to her favorite theme of late: “I think you and Ed make a cute couple.”

  Jana mumbled something about Natalie needing her head examined.

  “He managed to get your address, didn’t he?” Natalie’s words would echo in Jana’s ear for the next three weeks, drowning out thoughts of APL’s board meeting. It was true: before they had left the coffee shop Ed mentioned that he was going up to Maine for a vacation and wanted to make sure he had their addresses so he could send postcards.

  Ed called on Wednesday, one of Jana’s days off, to tell Natalie the funding had been approved, adding that he was taking off in two days and promising to put the paperwork in motion before he left town.

  Unfortunately he was not as efficient in his personal life; Jana never received the card he’d promised. The adventurous part of her hoped to hear from him, while the workaholic was relieved. Just when she’d concluded that his interest was purely professional, Ed called her at home—he obviously still had her number, although he claimed he’d lost his address book (his excuse for not writing).

  His trip had gone smoothly, he told her. It was too early for the tourists, so the rooms were cheaper, and the vacation itself was restful. He talked about Maine’s ragged coastline, claiming he’d never seen anything like it: driving along Route 1, one minute you’re following the beach, the next minute you’re ten miles inland. He told her about side trips he’d made to various islands. “One night I stayed on an island whose only structure was an old stone mansion converted into a rooming house. You could walk across a thin wooden bridge to another island that was all rocky, deserted beach. I woke up the next morning and could have sworn I saw haystacks out the window. Turned out it was seaweed, gold and still wet, left on the rocks at high tide.”

  “Popping seaweed was one of the few aspects of the beach I enjoyed when I was growing up,” Jana said. “It was never piled up like haystacks, though, just strands scattered about. I used to think they resembled branches, and before I popped them I spread them out on the sand in different gnarled tree-trunk patterns.”

  “You would have enjoyed hunting for driftwood along the Maine coast, then. The pieces were beautifully shaped, washed smooth by the waves. I brought home one piece that I swore at first was the bone of a rat or some other small animal. You’ll have to see it.”

  “Jersey beaches never had much in the way of driftwood. Plenty of shells, though. Most of them were broken, but even the broken shapes made fascinating patterns. I could have stared at those shells for hours.”

  “Were you one of those kids who painted clam shells and sold them as ash trays?” Ed asked jokingly.

  “Not on your life. I never wanted to interfere with their natural iridescence.”

  “That’s how I feel about coral. When I was a kid, we used to go to Miami every Christmas to visit my grandparents, and I remember being enchanted by the pieces of coral along the beach.”

  “Unfortunately Lakewood didn’t have much in the way of coral, either. But I’ve seen its beauty. I have friends who went to Florida especially to collect coral to use for their bathroom floor.”

  “What a great idea. It sounds gorgeous.” Then, changing the subject a bit, he asked how her three weeks had been.

  She told him they’d been hectic. “I’m going up to Yaddo a week from Friday, and I’m trying to get a thousand things done before I leave.”

  “You’re going where?”

  “Yaddo. It’s an artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs. An invitation is considered an honor, and this is the third time they’ve invited me.” She didn’t bother mentioning that she’d been rejected the first two times she applied, and how devastated she’d been. That had been back in the early seventies, when she didn’t need the time for uninterrupted work as much as she wanted the connections to be made at colonies such as Yaddo or MacDowell. Despite recommendations, Yaddo rejected her twice, MacDowell three times. She might have wanted time out of the city, but she was too proud to apply to the less prestigious colonies such as Cummington or Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. All or nothing, no compromises—that’s the way she’d always been, but only in the past five or six years had it paid off for her.

  “I didn’t realize you were leaving town,” Ed said after a moment’s silence. “For a few weeks?”

  “A few months. Unless unforeseen problems arise, I’ll be up there till early September.”

  “How are you able to get that much time away from The Paperworks Space?” He’d hoped this call would help him get to know Jana better, and at first that seemed to be happening. But hearing she was leaving town came as a disappointment. Quickly the little businessman inside him took over, and he began to question the professionalism of the people running the project he’d just recommended for a considerable amount of funding.

  “I’m the artistic director, the curator. Natalie’s the executive director,” Jana reminded him. “She’ll keep the doors open till June 15. Then we’re open by appointment only through Labor Day.”

  “What about the artists you’re exhibiting?”

  “We don’t offer shows during the summer. Not many people walk the streets doing the gallery tour when it’s hot out, and certainly anyone who can afford it gets out of the city. Nat tried staying open through July a few years ago, and I think she sold two drawings the entire month. Most New York galleries close for the summer.”

  “I guess I’ve been working too hard to notice,” Ed laughed, trying to ease his way back to the original purpose of his call. He explained that in his position as community coordinator he reviewed a wide range of proposals from organizations throughout the metropolitan area, but most of the proposals from arts associations had been given to Marsha for review. The closest he’d come to working on an arts project before theirs had involved booking conservationists onto talk shows and monitoring the programs APL sponsored on WNET. Jana’s familiarity with the art world was one of the traits which sparked his interest, he realized now. “Do you have time to get together for a drink before you leave town?” he asked.

  Jana pressed the receiver tight against her cheek. She wanted very much to see him. But she was also suddenly frightened of seeing him alone again, without Natalie, without the pretense of a business meeting. “Can we leave it up in the air?” she asked. “I want to see how packing and last-minute tasks go.”

  “We can do anything,” Ed said.

  Silently Jana repeated his words, changing the pronoun: I can do anything I set my mind to, she told herself. If she met him for a drink Thursday night, she’d have ten days to psyche herself up for it. “Maybe Thursday night …” she said out loud.

  “Why don’t I give you a call Thursday night, and we’ll play it by ear?”

  “Great,” Jana said. “But don’t tie yourself down if other things come up,” she added. “As I said, I don’t know for sure if I’ll have time. Too often I find myself leaving things for the last minute. I’ve got clothes to pack, and painting supplies. I have to run down to Pearl Paint and buy some extra brushes and sketchbooks. I never find time to draw in the city anymore; that’s one of the things I’m looking forward to this summer.” Think about art, not about Ed, she chanted
under her breath. It’ll make seeing Ed easier.

  “Hopefully you’ll get everything accomplished in plenty of time. It would be good to see you.”

  It would be good to see you, too, Jana thought but didn’t say, praying she could psyche herself up for it.

  “I’ll talk to you on Thursday night,” Ed said again.

  Jana impulsively picked up all her stuffed animals and shoved them into the back of a closet. It was to be her last energetic act before leaving town. She packed absentmindedly, spent hours on end mooning around the gallery. Over the next week and a half, she often caught herself studying the relationships of just about everyone she came into contact with, trying to see where she and Ed might fit in this paired-off scheme of things. In one fantasy, they had already moved in together, and she was trying to find a way to break the news to her parents.

  Thursday night Jana sat in her apartment, packed, waiting for Ed to call, fearing he wouldn’t. Finally, a few minutes after nine, he called, and they decided to meet at her place. “It’s 342 East 95th Street, Apartment Seven—second floor rear,” she said, not wanting to say something stupid like “it will be good to see you,” but feeling she had to say something. She hung up the phone and went right back to sitting and waiting. Then, when he walked in the door, the first thing he did was hug her. She stood on tiptoes to kiss him, and narrowly missed coming down on his foot. An elbow jabbed her waist. From that point on, the evening seemed to go straight downhill.

  Since they were on the Upper East Side, Ed suggested they walk over to Elaine’s for a drink—he’d heard it was a place many writers and artists hung out. Jana claimed it was too noisy. She was interested in producing art, not in being noticed around the art world, the way Ed suddenly seemed to be. She suggested a little cafe around the corner which had outside tables.

  The place had only six tables outside, but people were leaving one. She ordered wine and Ed ordered a gin and tonic, only to be told they served nothing stronger than wine and beer. Making the best of it, he asked what they had on draft. They only had bottled beer. He settled for Heineken, insisting he didn’t mind, his body tense, fidgeting. He fumbled around for a few minutes, tapping a cigarette on the ashtray, before he smiled and asked Jana where she’d gone to school.

  “Does high school count? Woodrow Wilson High in Lakewood, New Jersey.” She tried her best to toss off her answer as if it was nothing important. She was improving: a few years ago she would have felt insecure about her credentials and made up some college. Tonight she didn’t even bother to mention she’d studied with Francis Harriman at The New School when she’d first moved to New York. More than “studied with him”; for two years she’d been his prize student. Here was a guy who, others said, taught women with his prick, yet he’d taken her seriously as an artist.

  “You’re kidding,” Ed interrupted her thoughts. “You only went to high school?”

  “I was lucky to make it that far. It was a terrible school, actually. They offered either a totally academic college-prep curriculum or secretarial training. I was painting already, and the only art courses I could take were pastel and charcoal classes once a week with an old woman who encouraged us to draw from nature, but hadn’t bothered to look around her for at least thirty years. I used to envy the kids in New York who could go to the artistic high schools.”

  “But they were extremely hard to get into. Just because a kid was interested in music, like I was, didn’t mean he was good enough to get in. Academically, my grades were great, and going to Stuyvesant was what all my teachers recommended. When I look back on it, I realize I was much better suited for a traditional education—even if I’d been accepted by Music and Art or The High School of Performing Arts, it would have been a mistake to go there—but I spent that first year in high school pretty depressed about the rejection.”

  “What instrument do you play?”

  “Piano, of course—isn’t that what all up-and-coming parents give their kids lessons in? I was interested in jazz, mostly. I didn’t want to play the written notes, I thought I could improvise. But I’d abandoned those pipe dreams by the time I got to college.”

  “What did you major in?”

  “Economics, with a minor in English. I wanted to become a journalist, but I got sidetracked copy-editing textbooks, then business magazines, and here I am.” He made himself shut up, lit another cigarette, put his hand across his face to shield the match. “I’m impressed that you continued painting by yourself,” he said, anxious to make this a conversation and not a monologue. “You must have had a lot of confidence and commitment.”

  Confidence? Commitment? Jana felt annoyed. It wasn’t as if she’d had choices, she’d simply done what she had to do. She stared at the executive sitting across from her, this man who had wanted to go to Elaine’s. All of a sudden she felt the need to justify everything she said. She bit her lower lip, said nothing. It grew later and later while Ed sat there asking mundane questions. What projects did she plan to work on? What were the studios at Yaddo like? Did she know who else would be there?

  Jana could have rattled off twenty names—painters, writers, even a composer or two, people she’d met there other summers—but they probably wouldn’t have meant anything to Ed, anyway. What he’d really been asking was: did she know what men would be there. Yes, there were going to be men at Yaddo too. They might be artists, but they were also men. Natalie had been right: she couldn’t run away from men forever.

  Ed glanced at his watch: half past twelve. He let his hand cover Jana’s. “I wish you’d take a later bus,” he said. “I hate the thought of you getting up at seven o’clock tomorrow, missing all your beauty rest.” He kept stalling, thinking if it got late enough, if she had another drink, if she could just relax …

  “I’ll be fine.” Jana pulled her hand away and stared down at her wrist. She noticed specks of paint around her cuticles. “Work’s more important to me than beauty,” she said, forcing a laugh. “I’m anxious to get to Yaddo and settle in.” She should have left yesterday. She should have avoided seeing Ed tonight. Besides being bored, she was more than likely screwing things up for The Paperworks Space. “I have to get up early,” she said for maybe the tenth time. She moved her chair back, picked up her pocketbook.

  Ed smiled, patted her hand again. He insisted upon paying for their drinks and, Jana noted, left a much larger tip than necessary. He walked her slowly back to her apartment, hugged her once again, gave her a quick, amiable peck on the cheek. By this time she was so tired that she made no move to pull away.

  She must have only been faking tiredness. The moment Ed was gone, she was feeling very much awake. She lay in the single bed, trying without success to focus her attention on the paintings she wanted to work on this summer. (“What do you need a double bed for?” Natalie had asked when she’d moved into this small but affordable apartment, pointing out that a single bed would give her more workspace. And at the time the decision seemed entirely logical.) Jana shuddered now to think what might have been going through Ed’s mind when he’d seen this bed.

  She kept thinking how she’d been anxiously looking forward to seeing him tonight, then how her desire faded as soon as he walked in the door. When she was six months old, she’d gotten very sick. The doctor finally diagnosed it as paratyphoid fever, but she got well before the diagnosis could be confirmed. Her parents must have told that story a hundred times during her childhood. Strange to think of that now, yet that experience seemed typical of her relationships with people: she’ll pull all sorts of stunts till she can be sure a person cares about her, then once she’s won them over she gets up and walks away from them.

  You see, it’s not only you, she wanted to reassure Ed. You see, it’s not only Ed, she wanted to convince herself.

  She turned over; half a turn was all she could manage in this bed, it was as bad as those cots they had at camp. So two people could have slept in it, after all—she and Ed, she and that doctor. But she’d been a child, she’d
been ten years old and small for her age; in another five weeks she was to enter sixth grade. She closed her eyes and remembered his warmth against her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Nights Upstate Are Still Pretty Cold

  DID SHE really think she could go off to Yaddo and immediately devote herself totally to work, the way she had other summers? Jana slept restlessly. The second night she had a nightmare:

  She was traveling with another woman. They were going to some sort of concert, and started talking with two guys. At first Jana thought her companions were going inside and leaving her behind, but the woman couldn’t get tickets. They all went back to the island, intending to get dinner, but one of the guys’ fathers appeared, and he kept them talking. It was after midnight and they still hadn’t eaten. All the stores on the island were closed—the only thing to do now was to drive back to the coast. Jana said she would drive.

  All Jana had on was her nightgown; she wasn’t even wearing panties. Her friend cautioned her to get dressed, but Jana laughed at her. Meanwhile, one of the guys cuddled up under her nightgown. She warned him not to do anything, but he wouldn’t stop. He kept unrolling his penis, and Jana kept folding it back up again, laughing. At last he got it in her. All she could think was that she was driving, there was going to be blood all over the seat of the car. He recoiled in horror when he realized she was a virgin.

  She woke from the pain—there was an incredible, burning sensation in her lower stomach. She lay there, knees drawn up to her chest, rubbing, but it seemed to come from inside her stomach wall. She pressed one cold hand against her crotch and maneuvered her legs over the side of the bed. She managed to stand. Now if she could just find the light switch—she’d forgotten how dark nights were in the country. She found a lamp on the table, then almost knocked it over trying to turn it on. She made her way to the closet, wrapped her familiar flannel robe tightly around her, and rushed down the hall to the bathroom. There was too much pain to urinate. She gave up and walked slowly back to her room, groping the wall with one hand to steady herself.