Lion's Share

by Rochelle Rattner

  “My guess is Jana might have been referring to the ‘big-name draws’ bringing in the wrong kind of publicity,” Gary said. Sitting next to Jana, he could sense her tensing as she’d made that statement.

  Everyone in the room was silent, until finally Bill reminded them that they weren’t dealing with Daniel Berrigan here. “People in the art world might be aware of Matt Fillmore’s controversial pieces, but the media at large isn’t likely to notice them. And we can be fairly certain APL’s promotion department isn’t going to highlight them on the press releases they send out.”

  The tension eased, but for Jana it was only momentary. The presidential election was in less than three weeks. Ed might be a registered Democrat, but he would be voting for Reagan this time around. Their relationship was new and exciting enough that they were able to avoid political issues at the moment; she hoped Matt Fillmore’s work wouldn’t force them into a confrontation.

  Another board member, a vice president at one of the city’s largest advertising agencies, offered to look over the stats of any advertisements before APL sent them into the papers, if Natalie could arrange it.

  “We’ll do our best,” Natalie promised, casting a quick glance at Jana.

  Jana ignored her boss. Unfortunately—or maybe it was fortunately—Ed never had much to say about the work he brought home with him. Jana had as much chance of seeing those photostats as Natalie did. “Strange things do happen,” she thought. Two months ago she’d have said she had as much chance of seeing those stats as she did of losing her virginity.

  Gary hung around afterward and helped clean up. “Sorry to hear you didn’t get the DCA commission,” he said as they were clearing off the table.

  “You win some, you lose some.” Jana tried to laugh off the hurt of that commission. “I’m in a three-person show at Walker Art Center, as a result of someone seeing those slides at DCA. And there wasn’t a thing Harriman could do about that.”

  “You think Harriman blocked the commission?”

  “I’m certain he did. You know how he feels about me—forget the fact that I’m working in oil now, I could be making my own paints for all he cares. He’s not about to give me any credit.”

  “Remember when you swore you’d never work with any paint which couldn’t be easily washed off?” Gary teased.

  “Even if I’d forgotten, I’m sure you’d remind me. Besides, you were working with encaustic, not oil. That’s even more of a mess.”

  Jana had met Gary in Harriman’s classes in 1970, and Gary made overtures of friendship from the start. One day she’d been in the area and dropped in at his studio. She found him in the middle of gluing bits of unbleached wool onto a black canvas. The black paint, the wool, and the encaustic stuck to his hands and completely covered his printer’s apron. She’d vowed out loud never to let herself get that dirty. She couldn’t see herself having the patience to give her body the scrubbing it would require after such a mess, art or no art.

  “You’ve come a long way,” Gary laughed.

  “Longer than you know,” she said, casting a smile in his direction which she hoped would convey most of what had happened over the past few months. Before Ed, Gary was the only person she’d ever tried to love. “You’re too selfish to ever love anyone,” Gary had written twelve years ago in a letter Jana still had around her apartment. Even Natalie had looked at it and said immediately: “He’s just jealous because you got into a group show at Nancy Hoffman while he’s off teaching in some godforsaken college to earn enough money to live on.” Jana laughed to think of that conversation now. Had they all been so young and desperate once?

  You’re too selfish to ever love anyone. Those words juxtaposed in her mind with his words from the one night they’d spent together: “Trust me. I know you’re afraid, but I won’t let you down, I promise.” After that, he’d gone into a stream-of-consciousness monologue, convinced that if he confided his every thought it would put her at ease. Gary’s body felt hard, muscular, bony, as unsuited to hers as Ed’s had been that first night he hugged her. They lay on his studio couch, Gary taking up most of the room, while she found herself huddled against a wall whose plaster, she noticed, badly needed patching. They didn’t make love because she wasn’t protected. Two weeks later Gary had taken the job in Wisconsin.

  “We’ve both come a long way,” she said, still smiling. Artistically speaking, Gary showed regularly at O.K. Harris, and had a one-man installation at PSI last year. Jana rinsed the last of the dishes and set them in the rack to dry, flicking her wet hands in his direction as once, sitting around her apartment years ago, he’d initiated a pillow fight.

  “Ed …” Ed rolled onto his back, sighed, reached down to his crotch. “What’s wrong?” Jana sat up. “Something’s wrong, I know it is.”

  He shook his head. “Wait. I’m not sure.”

  “It broke, didn’t it?” The flat calmness of her tone amazed her.

  “I think so.”

  Her eyes blinked but remained dry. She felt completely numb. Frigid. “I’m going to wash up,” she said. She mainly wanted to get away from him. There had been no pain, only warmth. She realized what happened the moment his semen mixed with her own harmless wetness. She recalled the times he’d started to ejaculate before she withdrew her hand, the one time he couldn’t move away quickly enough and accidentally came all over her stomach.

  “Ed,” she called from the bathroom, “does semen have blood in it?”

  “What?”

  “There’s blood mixed in with the mucous.”

  Ed jumped up. The half-torn rubber dangled from his cock, then fell off. He grabbed her at the bathroom door and spun her around. “That means you’ve still got your period. If there’s blood then you’ve still got your period,” he sang. Jana pulled away. Her period seemed to have stopped three or four days ago. She looked again. There were definitely spots of blood on the white toilet paper folded like a Dear John letter in her hand. It reminded her of when she’d had the yeast infection.

  Ed pushed past her into the bathroom, washed up, returned to bed, gave her one big hug, then turned over and tried to get to sleep. She lay staring at the dark window, thinking of jumping, but Ed’s soft, warm body had positioned itself between her and the world outside. Was this what love was? She thought the world’s problems would be solved the moment she lost her virginity.

  No matter what position she lay in, her arm seemed to get in the way of the rest of her body. The further away sleep seemed, the more her thoughts wandered. She forced her eyes closed. Finally she managed to envision a fence before her, one of those fences made from twisted, knotty logs, the bark still clinging in places. At last the sheep began jumping over, their hind legs stretching out to clear the fence easily. When they got to the other side they lay in the pasture, lowering themselves front quarters first, like camels. She counted sixteen, seventeen, eighteen go over the fence and recline in that manner. As the count continued, the sheep’s bodies took on less and less tension, until they appeared to be furry pillows carried by the wind. Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, Jana counted. Then it all trailed off to wherever sleeping sheep go.

  “That’s happened to a lot of couples,” Natalie laughed. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about—as long as Ed pulled out right away, the semen usually doesn’t have time to penetrate. Besides, if worst comes to worst, you’ll get an abortion.” Natalie continued shifting two drawings around on the wall, as she’d been doing all afternoon, unable to decide which way they looked best. “Abortions are as common as colds these days. You won’t have to go through what I went through twenty years ago, sneaking around, borrowing money, being picked up and dropped off on a street corner.” She made it sound simple, but Jana had never even had her tonsils out. She’d known several women who’d had early, supposedly safe abortions and had been emotional wrecks for months afterward.

  Ed didn’t take things as lightly as Natalie did; he realized semen didn’t need much encouragement to fl
oat up and impregnate a woman. But that was a chance women took. Most women could laugh about it, but Jana wasn’t “most women.” She’d overreacted to the rubber’s breaking; if she was pregnant there was no telling what would happen. What the hell, he might not be thrilled at her neuroses, he might hope that in time she’d settle down, but he couldn’t change her. The best he could do was try his best to alleviate her anxieties, hopefully without getting caught up in them himself.

  He took off work early and picked her up at the gallery. They wandered around the Upper East Side in search of a new restaurant; as had become a habit when they were slightly tense, they channeled their energies into a spontaneous game. Tonight it involved finding a restaurant they hadn’t eaten in before, complicated by geographical restrictions—the west side of Third Avenue, between 95th and 79th streets. The November air was still warm, and the walk was pleasant, but they wandered as far as 72nd Street without finding a restaurant that enticed them. Ed suggested they head back uptown, picking side streets between Second and Third avenues at random. At last, on 81st Street, they decided on a little place called Taverna España.

  Jana took refuge in the secluded darkness. Her stomach was feeling queasy, but she didn’t let that deter her from ordering a chorizo dish. They split a pitcher of sangria. Dinner was Ed’s treat, his way of conveying he understood what she was going through. He was doing his best to block out the classical guitarist playing not more than twenty feet away from them, determined to give all his attention to her tonight, and making Jana feel guilty in the process. She recalled Milt Hinton playing at The Bottom Line two weeks ago, Ed tilting his head back in ecstasy, listening to the mysterious subtleties in the music which her ears were not attuned to. Thanks to Ed, she listened to more music than she might have a year ago, but her appreciation was still visually oriented—she was fascinated by Hinton’s sheer physicality, the way he played as if he were making love to that bass. But the guitarist tonight might as well have been a statue. She stared at the bald spot Ed usually kept well covered; its exposure was the only indication that he hadn’t slept well last night.

  “I think it’s time to call your doctor,” Ed said between mouthfuls of paella, casually, as you would remind someone it was time to go to bed or time to turn on the seven o’clock news. “My guess is you’ll be large enough for her to examine you now.”

  Jana detected a tinge of pleasure in his voice—the consequences might be disastrous, but he had gotten through; he had done what the doctor ordered. “I know,” she said. She should have called Dr. Barbash a month ago, right after she’d lost her virginity. Only, what if she was still too small to be examined? She put down her fork. Sauce trickled down the sides of her mouth. She wiped it with her napkin, pressing the cloth hard against her face.

  Ed resumed eating, chewing every mouthful ten times, the way his macrobiotic friends recommended. He suspected Jana was sitting there comparing her self to Kathe. He wanted to tell her how different she was, how Kathe would have made his life miserable for months afterward if she felt he hadn’t taken enough precautions. But such a comment would only be playing up to Jana’s neuroses, so he let it drop.

  Once again Jana didn’t sleep well. Her head was foggy the next morning, but she wasn’t due at work until noon. She puttered around the apartment as long as she could, almost as if she had a premonition of trouble at the gallery. And sure enough, the first words out of Natalie’s mouth were, “The slides of Matt Fillmore’s work came this morning. I think you’d better have a look.”

  Jana flipped through the slides quickly, holding them up to the light and glancing at the titles. The piece entitled Power and Light was pretty hard to miss. She slid it into the projector and shone it on the office wall. In the foreground was a teepee bursting into flames, drawn with bold, vibrant red and brown strokes; inside the teepee an Indian family, bound and gagged, was depicted in a pen and ink drawing, while the background charcoal hinted at other Indians running in panic.

  It took Jana a few minutes to remember: ten years ago the federal government had taken over land which belonged to the Seneca Nation. After leaving it vacant for seven years, they granted APL permission to use the land for a new generating plant. Work wasn’t slated to begin on that plant for another two years yet; only the politically well informed would recall the small news items that appeared three years ago. Certainly no one on their board had remembered. Leave it to Matt Fillmore.

  Deciding the front room could stay vacant for a few minutes, Natalie joined her in the office. “It’s one of his strongest drawings,” Jana said.

  “I have a feeling that fact is going to be lost on APL.”

  “At least it’s not a dead coyote.”

  Natalie laughed, remembering. When the Central Park Zoo first closed for renovation last year, an environmental art exhibit was held there. No one from the Parks Department bothered to look over the works before the show opened: one artist had nailed a dead coyote on a cross, next to a sign that read “He died for your sins.” It caused a furor at the time. Mothers came with their children, since the exhibit was at the zoo, then ended up dragging them away from the horrific image of the crucified coyote. Even Newsweek covered the story. “It’s a wonder Central Park’s willing to risk another exhibition,” she commented.

  “They probably said it could never happen again,” Jana said with a bitter laugh.

  “It’s our job to see that it doesn’t.”

  “I feel more like a dictator than a curator.” The more she looked at Matt’s drawing, the more she found herself identifying with the Indians’ point of view. It had the effect of drawing viewers in, making them more than innocent bystanders. Turning away from it, she asked if Natalie had talked to Bill Fitch yet.

  “No. I wanted you to see it first.” And now that Jana had seen the drawing, they had run out of excuses. Natalie went back to the front room and picked up the phone.

  “There’s one thing I’m not about to do, and that’s try to explain the corporate view of life to the same liberals who made it possible for women like me to have legal abortions,” Jana thought as she put the slide back in its case. She wondered what position their board president would take on the abortion issue. How could you typecast a man who’d been married for fifteen years, had three children, a wife who stayed home all day, and a three-bedroom condo on Central Park West, yet let his hair grow well below the collar of his Italian suits, which he wore with style? Bill was as much of a puzzle to her as Frank Markowitz was. But he was the person who’d recommended Matt Fillmore in the first place.

  “Reprieve!” Natalie exclaimed, coming into the back again. “Bill’s out of town until Monday.” While they both understood this would ultimately be a matter for the entire board’s consideration, there seemed no question that they had to speak to their president first. “You can keep it under wraps, can’t you, Jana? I mean, you’re not going to let anything slip to Ed, are you?”

  “Listen, it’s easier for me that way, too,” Jana said, flicking off the slide projector. She and Ed had enough to think about as it was.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I Can’t Say I Wasn’t Concerned

  FIRST THINGS FIRST: she wasn’t pregnant. But the blood hadn’t been from her period, either. Quite possibly, Jana was still bleeding a bit from having recently lost her virginity. Dr. Barbash suspected that as her lover reached into new areas, he might be causing slight abrasions. It was probably nothing to worry about, but she examined Jana with an electron microscope just to be sure. The magnification such an instrument provided would also give more insight into that “blockage.”

  “No sex for seventy-two hours,” Dr. Barbash cautioned when Jana was dressed and sitting in her office. “I took a biopsy. You have an open wound there. It’s very important that you give it time to heal.”

  Jana welcomed such an ordinance. Lately it was painful every time Ed touched her. Last night she’d tried but failed to repress her scream. “I had the wrong angle,” Ed mumbled apolo
getically. He shifted his position but still seemed to be pushing against a bone.

  She took his hand and guided it toward a pimple. “I’m a little sore there, see?”

  “But look at how wet you are,” Ed said, settling back on his own pillow. Wet, but passive. Sometimes he wished he didn’t have to be the initiator all the time, but he supposed he couldn’t ask for everything. He’d been with women before who had tried all kinds of kinky sex, and frankly, he found Jana’s innocence more enjoyable than all of them put together.

  Jana had never bothered to explain she was wet because of the mucous secretion around the suspicious blockage—Dr. Barbash remarked on her first examination that she was wetter than normal there. Jana had known for weeks it had nothing to do with how sexually excited she was. She resented the fact that he turned over and went to sleep easily, while she lay awake. She resented how much he enjoyed being with her, while she, she … Damn it, say the words: she froze when he touched her. “I’m not frigid, I’m frightened,” she’d reminded herself as she sat in Dr. Barbash’s office this morning.

  “The blockage is caused by fibroid tumors,” Dr. Barbash said, drawing Jana’s attention back to the situation at hand. “I also found three or four minuscule warts, but I don’t think they’re anything to worry about. That’s why I took a biopsy.” She tapped the bottle in front of her. “I’ll run this through the laboratory. Give me a call on Tuesday or Wednesday.”

  Jana wasn’t feeling as shaky as she’d anticipated—Dr. Barbash had sprayed her with novocaine, the examination hadn’t even been painful. She supposed she might as well go into the gallery for a few hours. She was halfway to the subway when she had a better idea. Stopping at a pay phone, she gave Natalie a call. “Look, if there’s nothing urgent you need me for this afternoon, I might be better off going over to the library and seeing what information I can dig up on problems between artists and corporate sponsors. The more facts we have at our disposal when we talk to Bill, the easier it’s going to be. And we need facts and figures, not hearsay.”