All That Is (35 page)

As an editor she’d had little to do with fiction and seldom read any. She published books on politics and history and also biographies and was widely respected. She had become shorter over the years and Bowman one day noticed for the first time that she was bowlegged. He admired her, and it was because of the fact she was there and made it seem less remote that he rented a weekend house in Tivoli himself the next year.

Driving to Tivoli, north along the Saw Mill River, was pleasant. It was mostly woodland with very little business clutter, but it also felt strange. Wainscott and the towns around it had almost been home, and he had decided to go elsewhere not out of fear of seeing Christine or her daughter, but simply to eliminate the possibility of it and to put it all behind
him. He didn’t want to be reminded of what had happened. At the same time he didn’t mind reflecting on part of it, the part in Paris.

The house belonged to a professor in the economics department at Bard who had gotten a fellowship in Europe and would be gone with his family for a year. Academic life had its stringencies. It was a decent-looking house, but aside from the fireplace there was not much in the living room, a sofa, some chairs, and a small table. The dishes in the kitchen were plastic and there was a miscellaneous collection of glasses, but the kitchen door opened onto a little garden with hedges and a wooden gate to the street.

The house and its meager comforts made publishing seem a rich life, though not as rich as it had been. It had changed greatly from the days when there were only eight of them in the entire firm and writers sometimes spent the night on a couch at the end of the hallway after drinking in various bars until two or three in the morning. There were always dinners and late hours. Drinking in Cologne with Karl Maria Löhr, who never tired and after a while never made sense but who somehow bound writers to him by ordeal. Nights in the German darkness, driving around in the icy fog. You couldn’t remember where you had been or what had been said, but that didn’t matter. There was a kind of intimacy. Afterwards you spoke as friends. He had thought at times of becoming a publisher himself. He probably had the temperament, but he would not have enjoyed the business part. That could be the province of someone who did, a congenial, perfect partner, but he had never encountered him, not at what would have been the right time.

The power of the novel in the nation’s culture had weakened. It had happened gradually. It was something everyone recognized and ignored. All went on exactly as before, that was the beauty of it. The glory had faded but fresh faces kept appearing, wanting to be part of it, to be in publishing which had retained a suggestion of elegance like a pair of beautiful, bone-shined shoes owned by a bankrupt man. Those who had been in it for some years, he and Glenda and the others, were like nails driven long ago into a tree that then grew around them. They were part of it by now, embedded.

To make the house more comfortable he rearranged the furniture, moved the table and brought a leather chair from the city. He put some
books, a bottle of whiskey, and some nice glasses on the table. He also brought up a pair of framed Edward Weston photographs, one of them of Charis, Weston’s legendary model and companion. He unfastened and stored in a closet the sets of little slatted shutters that were inside the windows and instead hung some white muslin curtains that admitted more light.

In the mornings he had a soft-boiled egg. He put the egg in a pan of cold water and when the water came to a boil it was done. Carefully tapping around it with a knife, he removed the top, put in a bit of butter and some salt and ate the soft white and warm, runny yolk with a spoon. Afterwards for an hour or so he read the newspaper he’d brought up with him before sitting down with a manuscript. His life seemed simpler and in this bare house almost penitent. The next week he brought up a Navajo rug that had been in the closet and felt a little more at home.

Among the first people he met in Tivoli were a professor, Russell Cutler, and his wife, Claire, an avid woman with a slight lisp. “Between ourselves,” she would say, slightly thickening it. Cutler had written scholarly books but was now working on a detective novel, not without difficulty. His wife read every page and crossed out things she disapproved of or considered sexist. She was long-necked with long hands and the sari slipping from her shoulder the night Bowman came to dinner. There was a large dining table covered with a dark green, patterned cloth, and she had written out the menu and gone to the trouble of having two different wines and two fruit tarts for dessert. Her friend Katherine, with a striking feline face, had been invited, too, and busied herself helping the hostess. At the table she seemed not so much unwilling to speak as attentive—almost as if waiting for a tidbit—to anything Bowman might say.

“You’re an editor, Claire says,” she ventured finally.

“Yes.”

“A book editor?”

“Yes, I edit books.”

“That must be a wonderful life.”

“Yes and no. What do you do?”

“Oh, I’m just a secretary here, at Bard. But I love New York. I go to New York every chance I get.”

She had landed at Bard somehow. She had come to New York, which
was what she had always wanted to do, after a divorce but hadn’t been able to find a job she liked. She stayed with a friend, a French woman who was a painter and had said to her, if you come to New York, you must stay with me, but when Katherine moved in, said she would have to charge her some rent.

“Yes, of course,” Katherine had said.

It was what she said to everything. In Houston they had come to take away the furniture. Yes. Of course. She had an aristocratic disposition, she dismissed misfortune. She was a model secretary, nicely dressed, helpful, and efficient. It was her looks and the possibilities they suggested. She loved gossip. She liked to mimic. She remembered everything. Though she seemed to be a woman whose main interests were clothes and parties, her real passion was books. She loved books—no one ever loved them more. She read two or three a week. She would come home from a bookshop with a bag of them and start reading one while taking off her shoes. She would still be reading when Deborah, the girl she shared a house with, came home late after orchestra practice. Her own life she treated as a tragicomedy, but writing she treated seriously. The dream she concealed was to become a writer, but she avoided ever saying anything about that.

The next morning in Germantown in the little grocery Bowman saw her standing in one of the narrow aisles. He almost didn’t recognize her. She looked younger. He said hello.

“That was a nice evening at the Cutlers’,” he said. “Did you enjoy it?”

“Oh, yes. You were amazing.”

“Was I? I didn’t realize that. What are you shopping for?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even make a list,” she apologized. “Such a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“It feels like summer.”

“I don’t really have much planned. Are you doing anything? Let’s have lunch.”

“Oh, yes!” she cried. “Where shall we go?”

There were only a couple of choices, and in the end they went to Red Hook, to the diner. Only a few people were there. They sat in a booth. She drew in her cheeks as she read the menu, a kind of sophisticated pose.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

At the same time he sensed that she was more at ease.

“I’m going to have the corned beef hash,” he said. “How do you happen to know the Cutlers?”

“Oh, Claire. I met her at a lecture. Three professors were explaining the poems of Wallace Stevens. I asked her afterwards if she understood any of it. Between ourselves, she said, hardly a word.”

“Yes, between ourselves. What about her husband?”

“Russell? He knows nothing about anything. He likes to make his own wine.”

“Is that what we were drinking?”

“Oh, no. His wine is undrinkable. You spit it out.”

“Where are you from, Katherine?”

“Oh, a town in Oklahoma you’ve never heard of. Hugo.”

“You grew up there?”

“Well, yes,” she said, “but I left the day I graduated from high school and went to the city, and I had a little accident.”

“What was that?”

“I got married. I was eighteen and I just married the first man I met. He was good-looking but he turned out to be a drug addict, a horrible drug addict. I didn’t realize it, of course, being eighteen, but that’s what happened. He lost all his money. He had loads of money from his father. We lived in a huge house and had to move out of it. We had four in help plus the gardener, who slept in the garage.”

It sounded as if she were making it up, at least parts of it, but he decided to believe it.

“Oh, my, they were trouble,” she said. “The maid’s boyfriend was a big Mexican who drove his pickup to the back door and they would load it with meat from the freezer. I was afraid of him. Whenever I came back and saw the truck I would turn around and drive off for at least half an hour. I didn’t want to catch them. It was terrible. The only one I liked was the housekeeper, who ran off to Florida and called one day from a shopping center to say they were down to eight dollars and her daughter had entered the Miss Florida contest. If I would just send them some money she promised to pay it back.”

She was aware of her good looks as she performed, which is what it was. She paused.

“Are you married?” she asked casually.

“Oh, a long time ago. We’ve been divorced for years.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened, really. I mean, that’s from my point of view. She probably had some grievances.”

“What did she do?” Katherine asked.

“Do you mean work? She didn’t work. She didn’t read, that was one thing.”

“Don’t you just wonder at people like that? What was her name?”

“Her name was Vivian.”

“Vivian!”

“Vivian Amussen. Very good-looking.”

She felt a little stab of unhappiness, even jealousy. It was just automatic.

“Amussen,” she said wittily, “Like the river.”

“No. Two s’s.”

She felt he was losing interest.

“Do you have lots to do?”

“Today, do you mean? I have some work I should do.”

“I have a million things to do.”

“I shouldn’t be keeping you,” he said.

“Oh, you’re not keeping me. I’m just afraid that I’m boring you.”

“You’re not boring me, not a bit.”

“So, are you going to the Susan Sontag talk?”

“When is that?”

“It’s at the college. It’s tonight.”

“I hadn’t thought about it. Are you going?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there.”

She was already thinking of what to wear. She decided on a certain summery frock.

“What did you think of the food?” she asked as he was paying the check. “Here, let me pay for mine.”

She found her wallet but he put his hand over it and the bills she was clutching.

“No, no,” he said. “It’s my lunch. Publishers always pay for lunch.”

She had a good feeling as they stood there, as if she could hug herself. She felt he liked her as a woman. That was unmistakable. She felt she was perhaps a companion for him although at the end he had seemed rather abrupt—it was probably a matter of not really knowing him.

The day had been warm. It was still light outside as people walked in and tried to find empty seats. The hall was completely filled. Like a lone bird rising from the flock a hand waved from the middle of the audience. She had saved him a seat. Susan Sontag, when she came onto the stage on a wave of applause, was a dramatic figure in black and white—black trousers, black raven hair with a great shock of white running through it and a bold, sharp face. She spoke for half an hour about film. There were many students taking notes. Katherine sat attentive, her chin held slightly forward as she listened. At the end as they left she asked him as if in confidence,

“What did you think?”

“I wondered what all those girls were writing down.”

“Everything she said.”

“I hope not.”

Just outside they encountered Claire, who was smiling with joy.

“Wasn’t that marvelous!” she cried.

“It was quite a performance,” Bowman agreed. He felt like a drink, he said.

“Shall I come with you?” Claire asked congenially.

“Sure,” he said.

They went in two cars—Claire rode with Katherine—to the Madalin Hotel, which was in the center of Tivoli and had a good bar. Bowman arrived after they did. He had parked in front of his house just two blocks away.

It was a weekend night and there was a crowd. Claire continued talking about Susan Sontag. What did they really think of her—she meant what did Bowman think.

“She’s a figure from the Old Testament,” he said.

“She’s such a powerful person. You just feel it.”

“All powerful women cause anxiety,” he said.

“Do you really think so?”

“It’s not a question of what you think. It’s what anybody thinks.”

“You do?”

“Men do,” he said.

She was a little dismayed. It sounded chauvinistic.

“I thought she said some very interesting things about film.”

“Film,” he said.

“Being the supreme art of the century.”

“Yes, I heard that. I suppose it’s true. It sounded a little extreme.”

“But haven’t you been really transported by certain movies? You always remember them.”

He was listening and he now heard clearly what it was, a slight
th
on the
s
as if the tip of her tongue didn’t get out of the way quickly enough. She had said “transthported.”

“Didn’t you find it amazing when she said that if Wagner were born today he’d be a film director?”

“Amazing is not the word. I wonder why she picked Wagner. She skipped too many of them. She skipped Mozart.”

“Yes, I suppose,” Claire agreed.

“Dancing is more important than movies,” he said.

“Do you mean ballet?”

“No, just dancing. If you know how to dance you can be happy.”

“I realize you’re joking now.”

“No.”

They went on talking and drinking. Katherine was annoyed that Claire had come with them and that she wouldn’t stop talking. Oh, Claire! she said several times or ignored her. The noise in the bar was deafening.