by Mary Gordon
That had been eighteen years ago; she had been thirty-three. She and Billy had been married for nine years. A marriage blanc. That was a nicer way of putting it than using the word “unconsummated.” On their wedding night, he'd said he just wasn't ready, and he had never been ready, and she had never felt free to bring it up. She'd thought they were happy, and she didn't miss what she'd never known. He was affectionate; they shared a bed, and held each other, sometimes, in the mornings. She found him beautiful; sometimes she was moved to weep at the sight of his back when he was shaving. But she would never tell anyone the truth of her marriage, and she would never speak to Billy about it: she couldn't see the point.
They still had lunch together every sixth Sunday, and of course they saw each other at the Knickerbocker Opera, where she was in the chorus and he was rehearsal pianist. They had never, officially, divorced.
The chive-colored scarf that she tied around her neck was a present from him on her last birthday. Really, Billy was wonderful at knowing what would suit her; his gifts were always exactly right. If she bought a new pair of shoes, he noticed, and was complimentary; he would take her hand and tell her that she still had the alabaster hands of a Canova statue.
If she changed the shade of her lipstick he'd comment, disappointed. He said, “Eleanor, my love, you must promise me that no matter what, you will be the one I can count on not to change in the slightest bit.”
She had been glad to promise. And, looking in the mirror, she could be satisfied with her looks. With her look.
“Eleanor Harkness has a kind of timeless elegance.” She had never actually heard anyone say that about her, but she imagined it was the kind of thing that people thought.
She believed— she hoped it wasn't vanity— that she was fortunate in her looks, that she still had the right to think of herself as a good-looking woman. Good-looking in a way that brought with it neither danger nor corrupting adulation. “Neither Madonna nor whore,” she'd said to herself once, of herself, feeling a thrill in the harshness of the sharp words, uttered in silence, resonant only to her own ears. She believed she had the kind of features she would have chosen for herself: small, neatly made, her eyes gray-green, a modest, well-cut nose, a moderate mouth with a generous enough underlip. “A witty mouth,” Billy had said once, and she had treasured that.
She patted her hair one last time in front of the mirror. She was particularly fond of her hair— beginning to gray now, but still arranging itself, when she took it out of its pins, in vibrant, abundant waves. But she never let it down in public: she clasped it to the back of her head with bone or tortoiseshell or amber clips and pins. No one saw her hair as she saw it as she sat in front of the dressing table that had been her grandmother's: carved cherry, with clusters of oak leaves and acorns forming an arch across the top. It was a secret thrill: to pull the last bone pin out of her hair and watch it fall down her back. Occasionally, she might have wished to do that for a man, that set piece of ancient feminine allure, but she had come to understand that what she would really have liked would be to do it not in a bedroom, but on a stage.
If she had any disappointment in her life, it was that her music had not come to more. But she had refused to dwell on it. As her mother always said, “It does no good to sit in the damp dark smelly places of the mind. It only leads to rot.” But sometimes she allowed herself to wish she had performed more, that she could give recitals of lieder and songs of the French composers she so loved, Debussy, Faure, Ravel. It had been ten years since she'd had a recital; when her beloved teacher died, she had taken it as a sign and didn't look for a replacement. She could never have borne the kind of singer's life that required so much pushing and striving. She was pleased to think of herself walking lightly, gracefully, into a space that seemed provided for her. Not the star of the company, but a member of the chorus. That was pleasing, that was satisfying. She was a fortunate woman. She knew it wasn't vanity that shaped this self-assessment. It was, rather, a habit of mind she had inherited from her parents. She was certain that acknowledging such an inheritance could never be thought a form of pride.
It was a perfect autumn morning, and she took pleasure not only in the weather but also in her being perfectly dressed for it. She knew that her panty hose were not silk, but they felt silky, nearly the color of her flesh, but a shade or so lighter. And riding lightly over them, the satin lining, a lighter shade of chive than the fine wool of her skirt itself and the scarf Billy had given her. Her blouse, of course, was silk; at first glance it seemed gray, but looked at more closely, examined for a while, it was obvious that it had been dipped in a bath of bluish green. A shade to complement both her eyes and the loden of her cape, in its turn set off by Billy's scarf. The sun made the mica flecks in the pavement sparkle, she wanted to say, like diamonds; she was pleased by the sounds the heels of her Ferragamo oxfords made— so comfortable for walking but, because they were Italian, not earnest looking. The sky was slate blue and the yellow maples flashed against it as if they'd been scooped out of a plane of light the slate concealed and shielded. A perfect day to walk across Central Park, this Saturday, October seventeenth. Children played with large balls in bright primary colors; rash boys skated dangerously: girls, their dress another kind of danger, sauntered, smoking, tipping back their soda cans for the last sweet drops.
She knew that Fairway would be crowded, but even the crowding was, today, enjoyable. She imagined assignations at the cheese counter— surely the blonde thirty-year-old and the bearded ginger-haired fellow holding a green bicycle helmet would meet up once again for drinks, for dinner, maybe— who knew— for life. The cheese man gave out samples, try this try this, this Brie is from Belgium, don't be prejudiced, it's cheap but good, and this Asiago— he kissed his fingers to his reddish lips— I envy you if you're trying it for the first time.
She bowed her head when he offered her a piece as if she were a knight taking upon herself the tribute of a king. Yes, half a pound, she said, and half a pound of Port Salut. She bought three kinds of dried bean— pinto, fava, cannellini, modest and sensible as old jewels in their barrels. Her mother was planning to make a hearty soup. She bagged two pounds of McIntosh apples with the smell of autumn on them. Where, she wondered, did they grow? Into her cart she carefully placed endive, arugula, free-range eggs. The yogurt, plain, that her mother had told her to be sure of. She would take a cab home. What she had bought would be too much to carry through the park.
She put all the food away, keeping out for her lunch and mother's the Port Salut and two of the largest apples.
“Mustn't linger. Rehearsal,” she said, wiping her lips with the flax-colored napkin her mother had laid out. She brushed her teeth, put on some lipstick, and made her way downtown.
The Knickerbocker Opera Company rehearsed in the basement of Holy Paraclete Episcopal Church on Thirty-second Street and Madison Avenue. Eleanor took the Lexington Avenue bus downtown, glad to find one of the single seats vacant; she preferred not having to share a seat, which so often meant either having to shift to let the inside person out or stepping over the person on the aisle. She was looking forward to having a cup of tea with Billy before rehearsal, tea with lemon to keep her voice clear. He would order, as he always did, a Coke, a habit she found boyishly endearing in so sophisticated and cultivated a man.
She was the first to arrive. She saw him frown, as he always did when he walked into a restaurant, as if he were at once displeased to be in the room at all and concerned that the person he was meant to meet might never arrive.
She hadn't seen him since the tenth of June, their wedding anniversary: he hadn't, of course, forgotten. He and Paul had spent the summer at the house in Maine that had been his parents', where he and Eleanor had spent their summers when they were married. She had often wished that Paul would betake himself to an artist's colony— preferably in Europe— one summer and that Billy would invite her to Maine once again. It had never happened; each year she would listen to Billy's groans ab
out what had fallen off or broken down at “the old manse.” It was a rare instance of insensitivity on his part not to imagine that such a recitation might be painful for her. She spent her summers, as she had as a child, in her parents’ cottage on Cape Cod.
He looked young and fit and tan in gray wool trousers, oxford shirt, blue blazer. There were lines around his eyes, but they suited him, made him look less provisional, less the eternal boy. She thought how much better-looking a couple she and he made than he and Paul. Paul had put on weight, and the look that was, in his youth, romantic and bohemian had become, in middle age, merely slovenly. She was sure that this change must be a grief to Billy, who cared so very much about the look of things.
“How's every little thing, old girl,” he said, kissing her cheek.
“Eight as rain, old boy.”
“I see you kept yourself out of the Wellfleet sun. No chance of your marring your alabaster perfection to catch a few rays.”
“I think we all need to be careful about skin cancer with the ozone layer thin as it is. Not that Pa would think of sunblock.”
“How are the terrible two?”
“Very well indeed: they send their love.”
“Dearest, I want you to be the first to know. Paul will make the announcement. Instead of doing Iolanthe this spring, we've commissioned a new work.”
Eleanor's heart sank. She had little taste for contemporary music and Billy knew it. She wiped the corner of her mouth.
“It's a very fine piece by a young composer, a protege of Paul's. The commission is a great thing for him.”
She didn't want to ask where the money came from to pay this protege. Instead she said, “What a fine thing for Paul to have done.”
“Yes,” Billy said, “I think it is. He's quite young, this fellow, twenty-four, but he has an extraordinary gift, he can write lyrically and satirically at the same time. A bite, but an aftertaste of sweetness. This piece is called The Dream of Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol relives the highlights of his life in the moments before his death.”
“Andy Warhol?” she said, not even trying to conceal her shock. “An opera about Andy Warhol? Hardly a suitable subject, I'd have thought.”
Billy's face reddened. He wiped his mouth, very much as she had just done, with the white cloth napkin.
“Try and keep an open mind, there's a good girl. We'll be passing out the score today. Must dash.”
He left her to pay the check, which was, she thought, most unlike him.
She was never sure how many of the Knickerbockers knew that she and Billy had been married. She never wanted to bring it up herself, because she wasn't certain if she wanted it known or not. Billy was universally loved by all the singers for his kindness and admired for the suppleness and flexibility of his accompaniment, so luster would attach to her if it were known that she had been his wife. On the other hand, everyone knew that he and Paul were partners, so humiliation would attach to her, inevitably, as a woman who had been left. But to be left for a man was not the same— by a long chalk, she had always told herself— as being left for another woman. And she found it hard to determine which would attach to her more securely: luster or humiliation. So she had held herself back from the other people in the chorus; after twenty-five years of being a member, there was not one of them she could call a friend. Even those she had thought of as close acquaintances had left the chorus, because they had reached a certain age, the age at which their voices weren't up to certain musical demands. She was one of the older members now— but that was all right, she liked to think that she maintained a nice balance: she kept her reserve but she was friendly to everyone. If, occasionally, she picked up a whiff of resentment, she reminded herself that musical people were temperamental and self-centered, and that it had nothing to do with her.
She was asking Lily Streicher, who had been to Tuscany, how her summer was, when Paul walked in, dressed in navy pants, a yellow shirt (untucked, Eleanor noted, to hide his belly), and black loafers that made his feet look like thick fish, steaming in a too narrow pan, on the verge of spilling over the sides. The look of his feet in their ill-fitting shoes made her own feet feel hot; she wiggled them slightly in her Ferragamos.
He was carrying a stack of scores and he laid them dramatically on the top of the piano.
“Something exciting, boys and girls. Papa has quite a special treat.”
There was a stir among the singers; Eleanor felt complacent in her secret knowledge.
“I've commissioned an opera for us. By the next genius among us; we've stolen a march on the MacArthurs. I'll pass out the score and Billy will play some bits for you. It's called The Dream of Andy Warhol. I'll allow the composer to fill you in. It's my honor to introduce him. Ladies and gentlemen: Desmond Marx.”
Certainly, there wasn't a gasp when the young man walked through the door, but there was something like it in the feeling that spread through the air. It was as if a Bronzino had walked in, Eleanor thought, one of those arrogant courtiers in velvet and satin with the full lower lip and dissolute, commanding stare. Desmond Marx was beautiful: there was power in his beauty, and he knew it. His black jeans were creased perfectly, as if they'd just been pressed; his shirt, a bluish violet open at the neck, spread itself lightly, easily, over his muscular torso; he wore loafers— the same loafers Paul was wearing, but without socks, and his feet were thin and shapely in the loafers whereas Paul's looked overstuffed.
“Hi,” he said, looking challengingly at the chorus. “Well, as Paul told you, my opera is called The Dream of Andy Warhol and I know perfectly well it's a lot different from the kind of thing you do. Maybe a little bit shocking for you. But I think Warhol was a great visionary, the person who had the clearest vision of his time and ours, its violence, its strangeness, and this is my vision of his vision. I like to think it brings out the pathos and the grandeur of this artist. And I look forward to your responses.”
“Billy, if you would,” said Paul.
Billy and Paul looked at each other, Eleanor thought, like a pair of cats that had swallowed the cream. She wondered where this Desmond Marx was living; Billy had said he was staying with them. It was, as she very well knew, a one-bedroom apartment. She wondered if they had recently got around to buying a foldout couch.
Eleanor didn't know if everyone feared, as she did, the harsh, atonal sound so typical of contemporary music. But Billy was right; Desmond Marx had a lyric touch, and the melodies were sweet and haunting.
“Turn to the first scene in the Factory, the second place where the chorus comes in,” Paul said.
There was the sound of turning pages. Someone giggled. Eleanor didn't know why at first, and then her eye fell on the second page of the section that the chorus was meant to sing. She took her glasses off and put them on again. Surely she couldn't be reading what she thought she saw.
“Fuck me, suck me fuck me suck me.” The words were peppered all over the page like a noxious mildew.
Someone else giggled. One of the tenors coughed.
“Anyone have a problem?” Paul said, challengingly.
Did she imagine it or was everyone looking at her? She'd been in the chorus longer than any of the others, except Randy Brixton, the tenor who had coughed. And nothing would make Randy Brixton speak up; he was pathologically disinclined to conflict. He would give way if anyone so much as asked him anything, so much as indicated he might have to assert himself. Randy would be no help. She looked around at everybody in the chorus, trying, in her teacherly way, to make eye contact. But no one would look up from the score.
“I don't know whether I have a problem, which would suggest something stemming from a personal set of circumstances, but I believe there's a problem with the Knickerbocker chorus, taking into consideration our history and the nature of our audience, singing words like these.”
“Anyone else like to respond to this outburst?” Paul said. She had always known he disliked her, but he had made a point of being coldly correct with her. She trie
d to get Billy's eye. Surely Billy would back her up. But Billy had his eye on the score; he was turning pages, as though he were looking for something real.
“I'd hardly call it an outburst, Paul. You asked for response. I'd assumed it was a question asked in good faith.”
It was as if a knife had been thrown down on the ground between them. Mumblety-peg, she thought, remembering a game she'd played in her childhood. One of those words that didn't sound like what it was. Which was certainly not the case with the ones on the page she was holding.
Silence shimmered in the air like an iron ring. Paul was indicating by his particular silence— a silence that was separate from the others as if it had been traced with a chalk line— that what she had just said wasn't worthy of a reply. And that was, she felt, the most insulting thing that he could do. The pusillanimity of her fellow choristers appalled her. She felt it was time to take a dramatic stand; that, she believed, would put some spine into some of them at least.
“I cannot bring myself to use such language,” Eleanor said.
“You can't bring yourself. Then I suppose we'll have to do without you. But let me make this clear: you will sing in this opera, or you will not sing with us at all. This season or any other.”
“You can't do that.”
“Oh yes, my dear, I'm the director and I can. And many, I'm sure, would support me in saying that it's a bit overdue. You might have made a graceful exit as many of your cohort have, but you've outstayed your welcome. Your taste is as tired as your voice. It's time to leave now, Eleanor. Pick up your toys and go.”