People in Trouble (26 page)

"I like to watch TV in the morning," she said.
 
"What's on?"

She pulled out a crinkled Sunday section from under the bed and started reading it with great seriousness.

"Oh, this looks good.
 
`Senator's daughter gets kidnapped.

With Linda Blair."

"Can I tell you something?"
 
Molly said, feeling like she was going to cry.
 
Feeling so sad.
 
"I have been waiting for two years to sit with my lover around a table with her friends and family, like I sat with you at Daisy's.
 
For two years I have not been able to sleep in my lover's bed and say what I feel like saying or linger in the morning with someone to hold on to or watch TV with.

Thank you.

"I'll be thinking of you," Sam said.

5y I AT[ Pearl drove up in her truck and opened the door.

"Welcome to the country."

The truck made too much noise, so they rode together in a kind of friendly, necessary silence accompanied by mechanical squeals and groans, like an old mule hauling them up these American hills.
 
There are not too many places left with mountainsides and here and there between the corn, a horse, a white one that looks right at you in your passing car and flares its nostrils.

"Oh, no, I'm thinking like a postcard," Kate yelled.

"That's what happens," Pearl answered.
 
"Or some pastoral movie.
 
I could turn on the radio for soundtrack.
 
The only stations we get up here are country music or God."

"That's okay," Kate shouted over the rattling motor.
 
"I'm happy."

They decided to go back to Pearl's place and relax, then I, spend the whole next day working on the frames.
 
The first thing that popped into Kate's head once they were quiet again was the classic city-dweller reaction to hitting the hills.
 
I've got to be out of my mind to live in New York.
 
She spent the next fifteen minutes in preliminary deliberation about moving.
 
The fantasy, however, then shifted from images of peace of mind to those of hauling wood in the winter and sitting alone inside for weeks at a time, always eating her own cooking.
 
Not being able to get books.
 
It began to sound better as a summer home instead.
 
Some old ramshackle farmhouse that would just need a little work.

Then they could get out of the heat on the weekends.
 
But that, after all, would mean buying a car and spending the next decade working on the house.
 
So the house would become the center of your life, because nothing else substantial could be undertaken until it was finished.
 
By this point in that line of thinking, Kate accepted that she was just visiting and relaxed a whole other layer into the well-worn front seat of Pearl's truck.
 
The sun then set in a fiery red uranium sky.

"Look behind you on the next curve," Pearl shouted over the claptrap engine.
 
"It's an optical illusion.
 
It looks like the mountain is coming out of the lake but they're actually miles apart."

"You think you're almost there but you never arrive," Kate said, too quietly to be heard.
 
And then louder, "Well, it's nice to know that illusion is not a human invention.
 
It's something we have inherited from the natural world."

By the time they got to the house it was darker and summer, a summer night rich and luxurious.
 
A window that led out to the garden was open and dark moths fluttered about the lamp.

"I've got the crew all organized,'' Pearl said.
 
"We'll put the piece in and you can arrive in the afternoon, relaxed, with a glass of champagne.
 
The park behind the library is the perfect location for a big installation like People in Trouble.
 
You're lucky that the private sector is picking up the bill.
 
How did you pull this off anyway?"

"Spiros, my art dealer, did it.
 
He's one of those people who pulls strings and spares you the details.
 
That way I don't have to think about logistics all the time."

"So you can reap the benefits and remain morally pure at the same time.

We all need someone to do that for us."

"Yes."

Oh no, Kate thought.
 
Not another one of these moralists.

"Well, anyway," Pearl said.
 
"I'm excited about the project.

We'll mount it in a straight line, about three-quarters of a city block long, beginning at Sixth Avenue and ending right at the foot of the stage.
 
Then people can begin at the front of the piece and walk a long straight line until they've seen the whole thing, which will lead them right to Horne's feet."

"Home?"

"Yeah, Horne, he's making the dedication of the new building, didn't you know?"

"No."

"It was on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section last Sunday."

"Oh, I didn't see it."

"Well, anyway," Pearl continued, "it will be one long viewing walk."' "No, run."

"Run?"

"Yes, Pearl, you don't walk through this piece.
 
You run.
 
You start at one end and run turning your head to the mural so that the images fly by quickly as though it were a movie, only there's -no technology."

Pearl was quiet long enough for the topic to change.

"My lover, Becky, will be over soon," she said, rising.

I"Would you like some wine?
 
Do you want to talk anymore about the piece?"

That smile again.

"No, tomorrow we'll go through everything and yes, I'd love some wine.

Can we put on music?
 
Do you have any opera?
 
I'm in the mood for something fabulous and huge."

They sat back again, listening to Tosca.
 
There was nothing outside, no motion.
 
There was a sound, which was Callas, and there was another sound which had to do with the movement of glass and then the human throat.

Pearl was knitting, of all things.
 
Kate guessed it was one of those habits a person acquired in the country when loneliness became unbearable.
 
Was Pearl lonely?
 
She seemed fine.
 
Kate sank -into her chair and closed her eyes.
 
She didn't like being alone for more than three days, that she knew from experience.
 
Three days was fine but then she needed a familiar body next to hers.

Whose?
 
Peter's or Molly's.
 
Either one would do.

"How do you feel?"
 
Pearl asked, looking up.

"I don't know," Kate answered without thinking.
 
Then she considered the question privately.
 
She had no idea.
 
There was a dullness, a soreness, a large blank.
 
"There's a wall somewhere in my chest and I guess it needs to be broken down but I don't know why exactly or even what it is.
 
There's this solid heavy thing I carry around with me.

Sometimes I forget I even have it."

"Well, what's going to happen with you and Molly?
 
With --you and your husband?"

"I'm going to keep it like this for as long as I can."

--"How do they feel about that?"

"They both hate me for it.
 
Neither one will ever forgive me.

Peter will bury it somewhere and Molly will wear it as a festering wound.
 
I could never choose Molly.
 
She has been most dramatically wronged, so I would have to spend years begging forgiveness and being extra kind.
 
Besides, you know I could never leave Peter."

"Why not?"

"Habit."

"But do you love him?"

I"Of course I do."
 
Kate felt a horrible anxiety, like she was --trying to breathe with her head under water.
 
"I have great affection for him."

Her words resonated in the small cabin.

"Listen, Pearl, I don't want to live in a ghetto like lesbians do.
 
I like men.
 
I want to be universal.
 
I want to be part of them."

Pearl's needles clicked in the yellow lamplight.

"I once tried to go back to men after I had been really hurt," Pearl said.
 
"It was very.
 
. . confusing."

"In what way exactly?"

"I felt absurd.
 
I was inadequate from too much knowledge.

Playing the role only works if you don't know it's a role.
 
You have to believe that that's the way it is."

"I like fucking.
 
I like men.
 
I'm not gay like the rest of you."

"Whoa,'' Pearl said.
 
"Do you tell your husband and straight friends, `I'm not straight like the rest of you'?"
 
Pearl started to say something else but took a drink of wine instead.
 
Then she said something entirely different.
 
"Are you cold?"

She turned the record over.
 
Then she started rolling a cigarette that she should have started rolling a long time before.

"I'm not gay," Kate said.

"I didn't say you were," Pearl answered, lighting it slowly with a wooden match.

"You implied it."

"Actually I don't think you're gay at all.
 
Have some more wine.
 
The night is a dark, dark well.
 
We have music and comfortable chairs.

We're very lucky."

"Can I use the phone?"
 
Kate asked.
 
There was an urgency in her voice.

There was masked panic.

"Sure.
 
It's in the kitchen."
 
Pearl smoked very slowly.

Kate dialed home.
 
There was no answer.
 
She dialed Molly.

There was no answer.
 
Then she called Spiros.

"Hello?"

"Spiros, it's me."

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, yeah, just been running around all day.
 
I'm upstate with the carpenter.
 
Everything is set.
 
Did you get a chance to look at the slides?
 
I dropped them off Wednesday."

"Yes."

"Well?"

"Kate dear, it's difficult to see in the slides what the impact will be when all the images are spread out in front of me.
 
But my first impression is that the piece seems to lack compositional restraint.

There's no pictorial entrapment.
 
No sense of archetonic space.

"Are you joking?"

Kate wanted a cigarette.
 
When was the last time she had actually smoked one?
 
She stuck her head out the kitchen door and made a rolling motion between her thumb and forefinger.

Pearl smiled and threw her the pouch.

"What do you mean?"

That was the first question Spiros had ever asked her without affectation.

"I mean, Spiros, who wants to entrap photographs?
 
Who cares about archetonic space when people are so sad?"

"Yes, yes, of course," he said, regaining his composure immediately.

"Is something else bothering you?"

"Spiros, have you ever thought of me as a lesbian?"

"Absolutely not," he said without a pause.
 
"You're an artist.

You need a wide range of perverse experiences.
 
No, absolutely not.

Peter has been very busy with his work lately and you haven't been getting enough attention.
 
But he'll take a vacation soon and I'm sure everything will go back to normal.

"Is that true?"' I "Oh yes."

--"Has he been extra busy lately?"

"Very busy.
 
Now you calm down, Kate.
 
Relax.
 
Peter is a great artist.

He's brilliant.
 
And you are too.
 
The world has not fully recognized the quality of work that the two of you produce because you are both speaking the truth and the world is stupid.

All of the world's great artists were first ignored because they were too far ahead of their time.
 
You're nervous about the installation, that's all."