Passion and Affect (23 page)

“That's very interesting,” said Binnie. “Have you considered a career in fiction?”

Binnie lived on the third floor of a brownstone. Her apartment was painted white, and there was very little in it. Nothing was tacked or hung on the wall. There were no plants, or rugs. She had a sofa made of wooden planks covered with colorless sharkskin pillows and three straight-backed chairs of bleached pine. There was a desk, made out of a whitewashed door. Her bedroom contained a bed with a blue spread, and nothing else. There was a white kitchen with an unpainted table.

“Sit down,” said Binnie. “Take off your coat.”

“Where should I sit?” asked Harry.

“Any place.”

“You don't seem to have much in the way of furniture in here.”

“My Edwardian father took it all away,” said Binnie, sliding a chair out from under the table.

Harry sat, and put his grubby book bag on the floor. It contained several pamphlets on Vermeer that he needed for his dissertation.

“I guess I got you all wrong,” Harry said.

“I guess you did,” said Binnie. “How do you want your tea?”

“Milk,” said Harry, “and a little sugar.” She led him into the living room and he sat on the sofa with his cup. Binnie sat at the desk that was made out of a door.

“Well,” said Harry.

“Well what?”

“Tell me how I was wrong.”

“You can see how you were wrong.”

“I mean,” said Harry, “where are you from?”

Binnie unhooked the ovals at the back of her head. Two coils of hair spread over her shoulder.

“My father is a spy and my mother is a zookeeper. My granny teaches Anglo-Saxon at the University of Uruguay,” she said, without inflection.

Harry watched her from the sofa. She looked like
The Girl with the Pearl Earrings
. It made him sad to look at her. He felt sullied, and ridiculous. What he wanted to do was suddenly to blurt out the truth to her—the truth about everything: his dissertation, how Murray had been thrown out of school for taking drugs, how he sometimes seemed near to tears in museums, how he watched her, how he felt that she must hate him for being such a fool. The words piled up in the back of his throat, but looking at her cool, uninterrupted face, he began to edit.

“I want to know who you are,” he said.

Binnie crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. “No, you don't, if you really think about it. Aren't you sad that I don't live in some old house in Brooklyn with my granny?”

“No,” said Harry sadly. “That was only because I didn't know who you were.”

“You still don't,” said Binnie, “and tomorrow you can make up a whole new life for me, can't you?”

“As long as I've been so ridiculous,” Harry said, “can I ask you another ridiculous question?”

“Sure.”

“Do you have any pearl earrings in the shape of a pear, a sort of round pear?”

“No,” said Binnie.

“Because,” Harry said. “There's a painting of a girl who looks like you, and she has on earrings like that.”

“Sorry,” said Binnie, pinning her hair back into its ovals.

“I guess I'll go, then. Thank you for the tea. May I see you again?”

Binnie helped him on with his coat. “Sure,” she said. “Tomorrow, counter three.”

Harry coughed as he walked into his apartment. He had walked all the way home, sixty-five city blocks, so distracted that when he got to his door he reached for his wallet, thinking he had taken a cab. He switched on the light, and sat in his tapestry armchair, under the mobile, and stared at his potted trees. Amidst some hanging plants were reproductions of Vermeer. Over his navy sofa was a real Redon. He had a Persian rug on the floor. Hanging over his bed was what his father called the “Big Plum's Big Plum.” It was a painting of Delf Harbor, done by a master of the time of Vermeer. It was his graduation from college present.

Harry sat in his chair and flexed his foot. When he thought of Binnie's empty apartment, the density of his possessions unhinged him. He thought of her unhooking the ovals of her hair, and crossing her legs. He went over every scrap of the conversation between them and came up with something almost as empty as her apartment. He thought how sparse her life was, how tidy and bare. Maybe, he thought, she was someone fleeing from an apartment like his, a rich girl disgusted by possessions, who in rebellion had stocked her house with nothing, and worked as a supermarket checker out of spite. It seemed to fit her, he thought, raging against a father who was perhaps an art historian and a cultivated mother, a house full of Meissen and a couple of Caravaggios.

He sighed, and went to his writing table. On a clean sheet of paper, he wrote:

CADENCE IN VERMEER

Cadence is not a term often applied to painting. I use it here to infer the way in which light becomes, not color, but an entity in itself.

Consider cadence as the way in which a slot or neighborhood of color sweeps from an intensity of power to an apex which is in fact less or more brilliant than that of its beginning. Light in the works of Vermeer has nothing to do with the placement of color. For the first time, light is something other than color. Something which has, in fact, nothing to do with painting.

Harry stopped, and thought of Binnie. He traveled over her in his mind, as if he were in his manager's perch, looking down to her. Watching her tie up the cash register for the evening always made him melancholy, and he was melancholy thinking about it now. He felt like a man in a Rembrandt, tinged brown with sorrow and wisdom.

He looked at his dissertation, or the heap that was to become his dissertation, and sighed again. He was of two minds about this Vermeer business, and he was of two minds about this supermarket business. That accounted for four minds in all, and it made life painful for him. During the day, his thesis gnawed at him, but when he sat down to write it, he remembered that two cases of ginger ale had arrived frozen, that the Camembert was being returned because it was overripe, and that after weeks of trying out Humbolt's new pork and beans with pickles, none of the five cases had been sold. During the day, he dreamed at his manager's perch of a supermarket that looked like the Sistine chapel: fruit hung in porcelain baskets. He dreamed of Vermeer brand tomato paste. Binnie wandered through this supermarket in an embroidered robe. The cash register was mother of pearl. Often, her face appeared on the label for Vermeer brand peaches. Her cash register spat out totals on a little flag of silk. He felt a little gong of sadness go off in his head, and he fell asleep at his desk with his jacket on.

Harry sat at his manager's perch, tallying up receipts for orange juice. It was a fresh new day. Often he felt noble sitting there, as if he brought a higher wisdom to the store, but he knew he didn't: Max and Charlie knew more about packing, shipping, bills of lading, price fixing, and where to get the best fennel than he did. But Harry's father often said that the real sign a family had become established was when it produced an intellectual, and Harry was it. Still, Harry often thought that he was compelled by this attitude of his father's to feel noble, when what he really felt was dreamy, transfixed, tired, and stricken. The sum total of his day's work seemed to be hours of staring at Binnie Chester, and trying to get the coffee shipments coordinated at the same time. It was good for Harry, Harry's father had told him, to work at the Big Plum—all the Markhams had worked there. It was good for his dissertation, Harry's father said, because it is good for the intellectually inclined to see what the real world is like, the world of people like Max and Charlie, and Butch and Arleen Solidark. Besides, Harry's father maintained, working in trade would give him a thirst for art, so that when Harry went home at night, he would go to his dissertation as a starving man goes to a banquet.

The day began when Binnie walked in. It was overcast and a pale, pearly light shone down on the rows of bottles, tins, cans, and boxes. Even the packages of detergent had a sheen to them. Binnie slipped quietly behind counter three and tied on her Big Plum smock. When she leaned over to check the stack of shopping bags, Harry noticed that she moved like someone who had been to ballet school. He imagined her in Minneapolis—Minneapolis to him was large and open, like a room at the Hermitage in Leningrad, white-walled with scrolled moldings. Outside lay a flat stretch of snow, and some very green pine trees. In this room in Minneapolis was Binnie, dressed in a pale leotard, exercising at the barre. She was driven to her ballet classes by a chauffeur who arranged a plaid rug over her knees. It was very cold in Minneapolis. She was all alone in this wide room, doing spins and pirouettes.

He caught her at the door at closing time.

“Have you ever taken ballet lessons?”

Binnie looked up at him. When he saw her face, he wanted to turn away. Her mouth curved down at the corners, and her eyes were tired. She looked as if she were in pain.

“Look,” she said slowly. “Enough's enough. Leave me alone with all this. Go write a novel about ballet in the A&P.” She bunched her scarf around her neck and ran, a little knock-kneed, around the corner and out of sight.

Murray, Harry's cousin, was supposed to be learning a sense of responsibility at the Big Plum.

“I'm putting in time here, man,” he said to Harry. “So are you.”

“It's good for my dissertation,” said Harry. “It's the principle of opposites.”

“What the hell does that mean?” said Murray.

“It means that the supermarket business has nothing to do with art history or Vermeer, but that the conditions I face every day, which are antithetical to my thesis, put a pressure on me to get it done, see?”

“No,” said Murray.

“I don't know how they let you into college, Murray,” Harry said.

“They threw me out, man,” said Murray.

It was the fifth day since Binnie had run away from him at the corner of the Big Plum. She was as impassive as an apple; she barely looked at the customers as she rang up their carts of groceries. Harry looked down at her from his manager's perch, staring at her sadly. He felt like a vegetable without its skin: raw and vulnerable. Often he thought he would cry. Once he did, over a green order form. Tears slid down his face, and he was glad that he was alone in his manager's perch, glad that he was bent over so that no one could see him. He brooded over Binnie, over his dissertation, and over Murray, who had been late every morning for a week. He had been told to get Murray in line.

He took Murray out to lunch. Around the corner from the Big Plum was a small, gritty Italian restaurant where they had a plate of clams each.

“Now, look Murray,” Harry began.

“Yeah, look what,” said Murray.

“Well, for starters you don't come in on time, and second they don't think you're performing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Murray, stabbing a clam with the tip of his fork.

“You have to listen,” said Harry.

“Oh, man. What a drag,” whined Murray. “You listen. You come in on time, but you don't even do anything except sit around and cry and look at Binnie.”

“Cry?” shouted Harry. “Binnie?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Murray stared at his cousin with his glazed eyes. “I may come into work stoned, man, but I have an appreciation of reality.”

“Reality?” Harry said softly.

“This Binnie business is out of hand,” said Murray.

“What Binnie business?”

“Man, I got eyes. You sit up there on that cat perch and stare. I can see it.”

“Who knows about this, Murray?”

“There's nothing to know except you stare.”

“Murray,” said Harry, leaning over his clams. “What do you know about her?”

“Nothing,” said Murray. “She's a nice broad.”

Harry cornered Binnie in front of her house.

“Why, it's the Big Plum,” she said evenly.

“Did you ever think that it's not fair to know about me when I don't know about you?” Harry asked.

“No,” said Binnie.

“You have to tell me. Why won't you say who you are.”

“You know who I am. It says so on my smock. Binnie Chester.”

“But look, why are you working there? You're not like the other checkers.”

“Maybe I was thrown out of college for drugs like Murray.”

“No one knows about that,” said Harry.

“You think,” said Binnie. “What are you doing there? What's Murray doing there?”

“Murray's there to learn a sense of responsibility, and I'm there because it's the antithesis of my dissertation, and it's good for me to know another side of life.”

“I see,” said Binnie. “Well, I work there because I like it.”

“Because you
like
it?” Harry asked.

“You own the place,” said Binnie. “Don't you think it's a fit place for people to work?”

“I … I guess so,” said Harry lamely. Binnie looked at Harry. There was nothing in her face that wasn't serious. She looked and saw that his eyes were ultramarine blue, and that they were stricken.

“I'll give you a cup of tea,” she said.

Binnie drank her tea at the desk made out of a door. Harry sat on the sofa.

“You like this sort of thing, don't you?” Binnie said.

“What sort of thing?” asked Harry.

“Fitting little details together until you have a nice tidy picture.”

“I'm sort of an art historian,” mumbled Harry.

“In your case,” said Binnie, “that has nothing to do with life.”

“I just wanted to know …”

“I
know
what you wanted to know,” said Binnie. “And now I'm going to tell you. I'm twenty-five. I come from Minneapolis. My father is a foreman in a lumber yard and my mother is a housewife. I used to be a checker in the Safeway in Minneapolis. Now I'm here.”