Lion's Share

by Rochelle Rattner

  No use going back to sleep now. Jana tossed in the high four-poster bed with its hooks on the sides that had once held a canopy, a reminder that Yaddo used to be a private mansion. Damn Ed and his stories about traveling along the coast of Maine, driving out to the islands. She hoped now he’d had to sleep on a lumpy mattress.

  “It’s not sex you’re afraid of; it’s intimacy, affection.” She couldn’t get those words out of her mind. If Natalie had said them, she’d be able to brush them off as another catty comment. But it was Marilyn’s voice she heard. Jana had called her from Yaddo the afternoon she’d arrived, still confused about her “evening out” with Ed.

  “There’s nothing unusual about your reaction,” Marilyn began. She went on to explain that many women became momentarily unresponsive whenever they were with a new man. For some women, she said, the tension passed quickly. But not everyone was able to become passionate and emotionally involved even during intercourse; many women kept themselves at a distance for years, lying there dissociated from their bodies. Frigid, Marilyn termed it.

  Now Jana was even more confused. She’d been talking about sitting with Ed, not sleeping with him. Besides, she was emotional, constantly overreacting to little things; she couldn’t seem to laugh at herself the way other people could. The prospect of frigidity seemed not only irrelevant, but inconceivable.

  “What about the way you froze when he took your hand?” Marilyn asked. The phone went silent. Fragments of other conversations could be heard in the background. “The feeling will pass eventually,” Marilyn repeated, “but I don’t want you to be frightened off by it. That’s why I’m telling you this. If Ed understands what you’re going through, he might be able to help you. But as it is now, he’s probably incredibly confused—one minute you’re responsive, then a minute later you withdraw. I think you ought to tell him you like him but that you’ve always had a problem getting close to men.”

  “When I first moved to the city I was young enough to get away with saying that. But I’m thirty-four now, for God’s sake. If I tell Ed I have a problem getting close to men, it would be like admitting I haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Well, have you changed?” Marilyn asked. “It seems to me you’re still wrestling with unresolved issues. That’s why I wish you’d let Ed try to help you.”

  “Maybe,” Jana said. As always, she wanted to do it all herself, without Ed, without Marilyn. Making a feeble excuse that she needed to unpack, Jana hung up the phone.

  She was never going to get back to sleep. The last thing she needed at this moment was to rehash that conversation. She put one pillow over her head, tucked her arm under the other. Already that arm felt numb, as if she’d been lying on top of it all night. She’d go crazy if her whole body felt this way. If she turned out to be frigid, she’d kill herself.

  Jana sat cross-legged on the floor of her studio, looking closely at the milkweed she’d brought back from a walk. It was a depressing stalk, most of the life dried out of it, yet she saw a strange beauty in its form. She pulled apart the pod, letting its hairlike fibers stream through her fingers. She closed her eyes and imagined a man running his fingers through a woman’s hair.

  She’d been at Yaddo less than two weeks, and already half a dozen similar scenarios had been played out in her mind. She might as well see Ed and get it over with. If necessary, she would force herself to be responsive to Ed’s touch, maybe even go to bed with him. Once she’d proved to herself that she wasn’t frigid, she could come back and start using her time productively.

  The American Association of Women in the Arts was having its monthly chapter meeting next week. She’d only been to five meetings in the six years she’d been a member, but she’d been promising herself she’d get more involved, and it would give her the perfect excuse to return to the city. She called Ed three days before returning. She told him she had a meeting at Columbia Wednesday evening, and he suggested they meet at five o’clock at Teachers, on the corner of 84th Street and Broadway, it was near his apartment and a short distance from Columbia. Also safely public, Jana thought. Her relief was mixed with regret—they wouldn’t be alone in a car, or even a gallery.

  Once again they sat at an outside table. Broadway at that point went uphill, and Jana found herself tilted uncomfortably as she stared downtown. She stirred the plastic stick in her wine spritzer. A bag lady wearing two sweaters and no shoes crossed the street against the light, dodging traffic. The streets on the west side seemed busier and dirtier than those on Second Avenue, and she felt awkward sitting here, but the radio was blasting inside, and the air conditioning trapped the odor of stale cigarette smoke. “Terry Riley’s in residence at Yaddo,” she said. “Have you heard his work?”

  “Who?” Ed lit his second Camel.

  “Terry Riley. He’s a minimalist composer, in the Phil Glass/John Cage tradition. He’s done some interesting pieces and gotten quite a bit of attention over the past few years.” She’d drawn Terry out about his theories the night before last, hoping to get Ed talking about music and learn more of his interests.

  “I haven’t been to a concert in months,” Ed said. “This summer’s been extremely hectic. Frank’s family’s on Fire Island, and he goes out there Thursday afternoons, which means extra work for Marsha and myself. Today’s the first chance I’ve gotten to enjoy the daylight.”

  He doesn’t seem to be enjoying it very much, Jana observed. Her conversation with Terry had confirmed what she’d already guessed—muscles that tense could never have been adept at playing jazz. Either Ed was trying to put one over on her, or the corporate world had changed him more than he’d realized. “I can get caught up in the pace of the city, too,” she said, trying to get an intense conversation started. “But now that I’m away I’ve been painting street scenes, and the figures are in sharper focus than when I’m seeing them all the time.” Jana stretched the truth, this was how her painting progressed other summers.

  Ed seemed preoccupied with getting her to the meeting on time. “Just because I’m continually running late doesn’t mean I should detain you. Don’t pick up my bad habits.” It was only twenty to seven when he gulped the rest of his gin and tonic. “Better get you off.” He reached for the check he’d asked the waitress to bring with the second round of drinks, then found Jana holding it.

  “I invited you this time, remember?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous; women were born to be treated.”

  “Not this woman,” Jana said. The ambiguity of that statement did not slip by her. She pulled a twenty out of her wallet and left it with the check under the ashtray.

  Ed hugged her at the corner, though not even long enough to see if their bodies fit any better than they did that last time. “You don’t want to take a walk up to Columbia with me, do you?” she asked. “We could probably both use the air.”

  “I brought a pile of work home, and I’d better get back to it.” He gave her one more brief hug then took a step into the street and stuck his arm out. A Checker cab was right there. She slid in easily despite the portfolio which contained not art but her new nightgown—she’d wanted something lacy on hand tonight, just in case.

  She leaned back against the hard seat and recalled the day she’d been in Ed’s car—his sheepskin seat covers seemed strangely comforting in retrospect. Two months ago she would have traded anything to be able to relate to Ed as naturally as she did to other people; tonight she was upset because being with him was no different than if she’d met Marilyn for a drink. Dwelling on these thoughts, she managed to thoroughly disorient herself by the time she headed halfheartedly through the courtyard toward Ferris Booth Hall. She certainly wasn’t in the mood to see other people: they would be nothing more than reminders of the woman she’d never become. She’d pulled away from Ed once, and it didn’t appear he was about to give her another chance. She quickened her pace, jolting at every step, her portfolio swinging at her side, its expensive, lush calfskin brushing against her thin summer slacks.

>   She was barely in the door when two women accosted her. “We hear you’re curating a city-wide environmental art exhibition,” they began.

  “That’s right.” Word certainly gets around quickly, Jana thought, bracing herself.

  “Sounds like a great idea. Especially for a show sponsored by APL.”

  “I painted some Central Park scenes a few years ago,” the first woman said excitedly. “In several of them I incorporated pieces of rubbish I found lying about. I’ve got the sketches I did for them at my studio, if you’d care to take a look. I live only a few blocks from The Paperworks Space gallery; you wouldn’t have to go far out of your way.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’m afraid we’ve already selected the participating artists. We had to present their names with the proposal.”

  “Well, if any drop out, or if you decide to include more people, keep me in mind,” she all but pleaded.

  “I’ll do that.” Jana smiled and made her way to a seat that had no empty chairs beside it. She managed to stay awake through a boring speech on feminist issues at cooperative galleries and ran out the minute the meeting was adjourned. She should have realized most of the artists she enjoyed talking to would be summering in Easthampton or Greece. “You can always tell when my painting’s not going well,” she laughed, stopping herself mid-thought. Usually she was more tolerant of other people. She recalled the first three or four years she’d been in the city and realized that, given the opportunity, she could have been as irritating as what’s-her-name.

  For the hundredth time Jana wondered why she hadn’t arranged to meet Ed afterwards. He’d gone so far as to ask her what time the meeting would be over, but it was right in the midst of his saying how busy the summer had been.

  She had no choice but to go home alone and brood. The apartment was a disaster area. It wasn’t air-conditioned, and the windows had been locked since she’d left town—opening them now was like opening an oven door. Roaches crawled around the kitchen, even after she had switched on the light. She discovered a box of crackers in the cupboard where they seemed to have been nesting and heaved it out the window into the alley.

  “It might be hot here, but the nights upstate are still pretty cold,” Jana reminded herself. Angrily she threw two sweaters and five long-sleeve shirts into her mother’s old suitcase. As she slammed the lid closed, her eye caught sight of the initials: L.M.S. The M stood for Marcella, the middle name her mother had assumed when she’d gone into the Waves during World War II. Mom’s immigrant patents named her Lois, American and ordinary, while she’d yearned for a distinguished, foreign-sounding name. She was exactly the sort of woman who would later name her daughter Jana, the J a guttural Y sound, as it would be pronounced in Dutch. Most people pronounced it instead like a derivative of Jane. Plain Jane. Jane—that was the name of that woman who’d accosted her at the meeting—she’d yet to meet a Jane she liked. But when she was dealing with someone from outside the art community, Jana no longer bothered correcting their pronunciation.

  “We’ve got a meeting with the PR people at APL a week from this Friday, Friday the 13th believe it or not. They requested the artist profiles.” Jana had finally settled into a work routine, and Natalie’s frantic voice in the telephone receiver was a greater intrusion than usual.

  “I finished the profiles before I left,” Jana reminded her. “They’re in the second drawer down, on the left-hand side of my desk. You might want to go over them one more time to make sure we’ve sidestepped any possibly controversial issues, then get one of the interns to retype them.”

  “I won’t be able to present them with the same authority,” Natalie protested. “And it won’t look right if the curator isn’t at the meeting. Jana, please come down.”

  “Nat, we’ve already got half their money, why worry about what impression we’re making? I’m in the middle of three large canvases. If I leave now it’s going to screw up the flow.”

  “It’s not the only proposal we’re ever going to send APL, Jana. I know you went to Yaddo to get some time in front of the canvas, but this meeting’s extremely important, and I’m nervous about it. Besides, you’ll get a chance to see Ed.”

  “Who said I wanted to see Ed?”

  “You know you do.”

  “I don’t know anything.” But Jana gave in and agreed to come down for the meeting.

  Thursday afternoon she sat in the nearly deserted gallery, still trying to unwind from the four-hour bus trip, and checked over the profiles. All these artists had developed interesting theories, but when you looked at the work itself, it was often hard to find the connections. In her introduction, she’d worked to link theory and practice: “Because these eighteen artists have an ecological message to convey, all are concerned primarily with accessibility. Many of them have had extensive training in design; thus their drawings immediately capture the eye. We have carefully selected the sites so that each artist’s ecological message will be highlighted by the surrounding environment.” She’d gone on for three double-spaced pages—three pages of the same unspecific drivel she’d been writing for years now, long enough to have it down pat.

  APL’s PR department might expect such hype, but Ed deserved a little more effort. She turned to what she’d written about Lou Daniels’ work. Ed had raved to Natalie about how impressed he’d been with Lou’s drawings—if she could remember what he’d said, she could astound him with his own insights.

  “If she saw me now, Natalie would probably accuse me of using my feminine wiles to impress a man,” Jana laughed. And who knows, maybe she was; only she called it “being professional.”

  Ed began the meeting by introducing them to Phyllis Mason, vice president in charge of publicity. “She’ll be working closely with plans for the exhibition from this point on.”

  “In addition to media coverage throughout the metropolitan area, we’d like to begin contacting newspapers around the country,” Phyllis said as she leafed through the folder Jana handed her. Jana observed her bright blue and green scarf, not tied but carefully threaded through a gold ring—neat but tasteless. Like most PR people, she would probably not be willing to take many chances. “These profiles list the cities where these artists currently live, but they seem somewhat sketchy regarding towns where they grew up or might have studied and taught,” Phyllis continued, looking up.

  Towns where they grew up, studied, and taught … As Jana opened her own folder to the first artist, she wondered whether Phyllis would want to know about the jails, too. Matt Fillmore had been jailed as a result of his participation in half a dozen anti-war and anti-nuclear demonstrations. The jail population has probably changed by now anyway, she assured herself, smiling at the thought.

  “Let’s see,” she began, burying her smile in the papers in front of her, anxious to get this meeting over with. “As it says here, he currently lives in Boston, and he studied at Rhode Island School of Design. I know he also spends summers on Cape Cod. As I recall, he’s New England through and through, raised in New Hampshire.”

  Jana was turning to the next bio when Natalie placed a hand on her arm. “Why don’t you let us double-check the backgrounds of all the artists, then write them up for you?”

  “We were planning to get working on this early next week. Any information you can give us now would be helpful.”

  Jana and Natalie glanced at each other. Neither wanted to get off on the wrong foot with APL’s PR people, but they also worried about giving out inaccurate information and recognized the obligation to their artists not to disclose facts he or she might wish to keep secret.

  “Much of the information you need is on file at the gallery. I’ll put together as much as I can this afternoon and drop it off tomorrow morning,” Jana said before she realized tomorrow was Saturday and the offices would be closed. Then she laughed, and said she’d have it messengered first thing Monday morning.

  “Better yet, why not drop it off at my apartment?” Ed suggested. “That way Phyllis will have i
t early Monday, and we won’t lose any time.” He’d been preoccupied with work last time he’d seen Jana and wanted to make it up to her.

  Jana agreed and jotted down his address, doodling with the letters of his name and reassuring herself this was all in the line of business.

  “I notice that seven of these eighteen artists are women,” Phyllis continued. “As concerned environmentalists, I assume their interests reach out to feminism as well, and we’d like to interest the feminist press. Can you expound upon these concerns a bit?”

  Jana had anticipated this interest. She wasn’t involved in the feminist movement herself, but she knew how to go through artistic résumés, selecting feminist credentials for reporters, noting feminist spaces where they’d exhibited, collectives with which they were associated.

  “Whew,” Jana exhaled as she and Natalie left the building. “Who ever thought a corporate sponsor would become this involved?”

  “If this exhibition wasn’t also a promotional vehicle, APL wouldn’t be investing nearly a hundred thousand dollars,” Natalie replied. “Now they’ve got to make certain their interests are protected.” The two women made their way through the 85-degree heat back to The Paperworks Space to go through the files on these artists and make a few quick phone calls to whomever could be reached. “Didn’t I predict you’d get a chance to see Ed alone,” Nat chortled between calls.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  This Caring About Others

  JANA GLANCED at the clock by her bed: Cinderella’s two arms were on top of each other, pointing to the nine. She sat up and dialed Trailways—the morning’s final express bus left in twenty minutes; afternoon expresses left at 12:30, 3:00, and 5:30. She pressed the receiver down and called Ed, saying she’d drop by around 11:30. “The earliest bus is at 12:30,” she told him.