This Is Not for You (34 page)

“Are you really that complicated?”

“No. I’d hoped there would be time for you to tell me what you do know and why you know it and when it happened.”

“I think it would only confuse you,” Grace said. “We aren’t really at all alike.”

That night I had the first attack of insomnia I had had since I arrived in Greece. I lay listening to the violent noise of Athens that does not die away until nearly dawn, high-powered sports cars gunning up the narrow canyons of streets, people shouting to and at each other, doors and windows slamming. I tried to think what it would be like to live here alone without Grace, who stood not only between me and the test of the job but also between me and my own desire and loneliness. Finally I got up quietly and sat on the balcony, looking out at the temple built in tribute to perfect balance, perfect self-sufficiency. It rose above the ugly city more a rebuke than an inspiration.

“Can’t you sleep, either?” Grace asked, standing behind me.

“I guess not,” I said.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Athena’s a hard goddess,” I said.

“Then there’s some protest in you after all,” she said. “I always really thought so.”

“A lot,” I said. “But there’s no point in protesting, is there? We live in our ugliness, simply rebuked by beauty.”

Her mouth came down upon mine as if to speak to my grief.

“I’m really no good at this any more,” she said, “but I don’t see how else you’re going to learn. Come to bed.”

After that night, which had no sequel, I asked endless questions in my head, occasionally found a moment when I might have asked them of Grace, but somehow I felt I shouldn’t. I should discover the answers for myself.

“You worry at the world so, Katie,” she said to me one Sunday evening as I sat staring away from a book in my lap. “What is it now?”

“Did you live like this when you were my age?” I asked.

“How can you expect me to remember so far back? I don’t think I ever was your age.”

“Yes, you were,” I said. “I’m sure of that.”

“But I was never you, so it can’t make much difference.”

“But where were you when you were twenty-six?”

“I don’t know. In jail perhaps, or maybe that was the year I was writing a book.”

“Did you live alone?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t often.”

“Were you in love?”

“I have never been in love,” Grace said, “except with my work. That’s just how some of us are made. It’s fortunate because there’s a lot of work to be done.”

“And the big, blond German turns his gun on his wife and shouts, ‘Country first!’ ”

Grace laughed. “It’s been my line. No point in taking it out of the script by now.”

Grace held a lot of views she felt that way about. If I took issue with her, she would complain good-humoredly that she was too old to change. A new idea in work she didn’t let herself be reluctant about, but it tired her. In February, she had a heavy cold which she didn’t quite get rid of; I worried at her until she agreed to go away for two weeks at the end of March. While she was gone, I had to make a major decision about the budget and, as a result, had a major disagreement with the head of the clinic. By the time Grace got back, I was thoroughly discouraged.

“Don’t think I’m going to bail you out of this,” she said. “Oh, I could, but then where do you stand the next time it happens and I’m not here?”

“I don’t stand. I run,” I said gloomily.

“That’s the spirit!”

A virtue of a job that is impossible to do is that there is not time to brood much about any aspect of it. Three days after Grace got back, we left Athens for another tour of the south. By the time we got back, the head of the clinic had resigned himself to my decision and was even pleasant over ouzo when we met by accident. Just the same, I knew that Grace’s refusal to interfere had more to do with his mood than any power of my own.

The mail had piled up while we were gone both at the office and at home. News from Doris was that young Frank was going to marry a Quaker, but not a poor one, and they were faced with another American wedding. “Frank’s rewriting his will in defiance of the daffodils.” There was a letter from Andrew, letting me know that they had a son, born in late March, named Peter for Monk’s brother who had been killed—and perhaps for Peter Jackson, though Andrew didn’t mention him. I was pleased, but I also found it strange to realize that already the burdens of salvation were being handed on to the next generation. The gallery had now had half a dozen very successful shows. Andrew was beginning to be invited to sit on museum boards. “The charity boys are also after me. Please advise.” I did not find your postcard until I got down to bank statements and investment reports. A Mexican under a sombrero on the front, not bad enough to be funny, and printed across the back, “Here for a divorce. Write to me at Mother’s.” Stupidly I counted up the months on my fingers as if you had been telling me that you were expecting a baby and then was embarrassed for you that the number was nine. I don’t know why, an indecently bad symbol, I suppose, like some of your sculpture when you ignored obvious connotations. Why a postcard? Then I tried to imagine a letter full of dashes and faces. I could not imagine the last nine months of your life. I didn’t know how to begin.

“Going for a walk,” I said to Grace, who was just on her way to bed.

“Why don’t you pace up and down the balcony instead and talk to me?”

“Because you need your sleep.”

“I wouldn’t sleep. I’d wonder if you were doing something silly.”

I didn’t know whether to protest or be flattered. I remembered Doris saying, “It’s the only part of being loved that you’ve missed. You might even enjoy it.” So I poured us each a drink and we sat in coats with rugs over our knees, looking out over the city, while I again tried to tell the story of your life or my life, or whatever this is, for the first time with some candor. I must have talked for nearly two hours.

“Every time, I begin to talk about Esther and end by telling the half story of my own life. It’s like a Shakespearean bad quarto—a minor actor remembering his own lines very clearly but paraphrasing the major part,” I said finally.

“Maybe you’re not minor. You’re wondering what you ought to do about Esther. Isn’t that it?”

“I don’t suppose there’s anything to do.”

“But you wonder. Why don’t you go and find out?”

“How do you mean?”

“I’ll give you a week in June,” Grace said, getting up. “That ought to be time enough. Now, we have to get some sleep. You are getting to be a nuisance.”

For the next six weeks Grace seemed determined to face me with all that was dullest and most disheartening about the job. I saw all the people we wouldn’t admit to the clinic for lack of funds or on some technical silliness. I was assigned as guide to important American visitors who wanted cheap goods and cheaper night clubs. I was sent north to investigate personal rumors about one of our field representatives, whom I then had to fire. Grace even suggested, in a flair of vindictive humor, that I should attend stunt night at the American Embassy.

“There’s enough unavoidable stupidity,” I said, refusing to be amused. “You don’t have to invent any more.”

“I do have to dig for your temper,” she said. “I sometimes despair of finding it.”

“Well, congratulations.”

Two nights later, still in an unforgiving mood, I began to pack for my trip.

“Don’t leave too much behind,” Grace said. “You may not be coming back.”

“What are you trying to prove?” I demanded.

“Nothing, Katie. I’m trying to leave you free to decide.”

“Okay but I got that point about six weeks back. I’m very quick-witted about seeing that I’m free to decide. Nobody’s ever wanted to take the blame for what I do. You haven’t even been invited.” I was shouting and beginning to enjoy it. “You don’t have to bail out. You’re not even on the trip. Relax, relax, relax!”

She was holding me and laughing at me and telling me to please shut up before I blackened her already mythical reputation.

“You’re a witch,” I said more quietly.

“There we are,” she said. “I’ve ruined you for the Junior League. I’ll take the blame for that.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, sitting down on my bed, feeling so tired that I couldn’t imagine ever moving again.

“What’s this?” Grace asked, picking up a long, cardboard cylinder.

“I meant to show you. I found a painter while I was up north last week, making things out of string and wax and wool. The people in the village think he’s crazy. He probably is, but I bought a couple to show to Andy, to give to him if he likes them.”

Grace had opened up the package and was holding up the ragged apron shapes.

“Sick ethnic,” she said.

“Yes, and there ought to be more of it and less depressed imitation. ‘We have history, but we have no bread’—he gets the two things together.”

“Would he know that he does?” Grace asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“You’re falling asleep, child.”

“Defense mechanism.”

“A good thing you’ve got them. Sleep well.”

I did, and I slept well on the plane, too, so that when I arrived in New York on a Saturday morning, I had accomplished the time shift without effort and was met by yawning friends, complaining at the early hour: Dan, Andy, and you. Monk was at home, supervising the children and an elaborate breakfast which began with strawberries and champagne.

“We canceled your hotel reservation,” Andrew explained. “You’re staying with us.”

They had bought a small town house in the Village. Andrew called it small, anyway. It was five stories high, one room wide and two or three rooms deep. It reminded me of Frank and Doris’ house in London.

“It did us, too,” Monk said. “That’s really why we bought it, but I’ll never be any good at running a house, Kate.” She looked over her shoulder quickly and then whispered, “I just hate the servants. The first two weeks we had them I just locked myself in my room and cried, but Andy’s fired the nanny now so that at least I can play with the children.”

Lissa was temporarily a very solemn and uncertain little girl, learning to deal with the obscene curiosity of a baby brother, but there were already healthy signs that she would survive him. That he would survive her was still considered risky.

“Hello, Crow,” she said, the first time any of us had heard the name, but we knew it would stick.

That first day was full of drifting conversation and patches of excitement. I had presents for everyone and tales to tell. Andrew and Dan were fascinated by the paintings I had brought home and began to plan a show. Monk decided I ought to be the subject of a television documentary which she described in a thrilling voice, details supplied by an impudently enthusiastic audience if she faltered for a second. You were very quiet, not withdrawn really, but patient. The story you had to tell did not belong to this mood of homecoming which went on through Sunday to a party on Sunday night, which included Sandy and Lauris, who had finally found their way to the gallery, and a number of other old and new friends.

Monday was the day set aside for visiting with you. I discovered that you were not living at home but had an apartment of your own only a few blocks away. I could walk to it for a late breakfast Monday morning, just any time I woke up. Accustomed to your habit of late rising, I spent the early part of the morning reading volumes of new plays that had been left in my room. I didn’t dress until about ten-thirty, then realized, as I was putting on my lipstick, that I was nervous. Well, why not? This was the meeting I had come all the thousands of miles for without any clear idea why. And you had seemed to me in the last two days farther away than you had often been in Greece.

The streets of New York are extraordinarily quiet after Athens. That June morning the air was clear and warm as I crossed a wide, clean street free of organic odors and shouting friends. The Village, which had at one time seemed to me an intimate neighborhood, felt huge and impersonal and strange. I had a hard time distinguishing the words of an occasional American voice, being unused to its rhythms. The experience wasn’t new to me. I noticed it more for the choice I would have to make before the week was out. I was thinking of that as I knocked on your door.

It was obvious that you had also been up for some time, working perhaps, and then waiting with some apprehension of your own. You were dressed in lemon yellow, a color I always forgot about for you because it seemed unlikely until you were in it. We kissed in what becomes a shy custom for American women by the time they are nearing their thirties, and then you stood back with a gesture as much of showing as of welcoming me in.

“It’s very small,” you said, “but I have a good workroom out in back.”

It was, I think, what is called a Pullman apartment, a name that means little to my generation, most of whom have never been inside anything but a commuter train. It was one long, narrow room, at one end of which was a bathroom and a tiny, open kitchen, one unit containing stove, sink, and refrigerator. All along one wall, which was brick painted white, book shelves had been built under which was a door-sized table that served as a desk and an eating area. It had been set for breakfast with two straight chairs, side by side. On the other side of the room, to the right of the entrance door, there was a daybed, at the far end of the room a comfortable chair, a small table and lamp that obviously served as a bedside table as well. What was remarkable about the room was neither its odd shape nor its smallness but its immaculate order, which had not been achieved by one, grand cleaning gesture but was obviously habitual.

“I wouldn’t know it belonged to you, except for the first editions,” I said. “What’s happened to the antlers?”

“I left most of my stuff at home in the attic. There wasn’t room. Anyway I got tired of the clutter. It was time to simplify.”

The meal you presently began to prepare was as much of a surprise. Gone were the greasy fried eggs and burnt toast you used to present without embarrassment, if clumsily. Your gestures were sure, accustomed. A pot of jam and glasses of orange juice were set out before it was time to sprinkle capers into the scrambled eggs.