Dry Your Smile (43 page)

The rugs were picked up to be cleaned and kept by the cleaners in summer storage, an arrangement they little know could go on for many seasons. The pots, pans, and cutlery are hopelessly beyond scouring and had to be thrown out. The dishes mostly cracked, chipped, not worth saving or selling. The same with her appliances (rusted iron, battery-corroded radio; three lamps with electrical shorts, broken bases, and torn shades; a crudded and inoperative toaster, similar-state electric fry pan, and so forth). Records and books will go into storage, along with the scrapbooks—through which Iliana began to leaf during one of our container-coffee-from-the-nearby-deli breaks. I tried to stop her, but she's unstoppable. To my surprise, her eye saw things in the photographs I've never seen: a set jaw, a sidelong sullen look, expressions of rebellion in my five-year-old face, a whole body language of resistance … I've neither the time nor the interest at this stage to re-examine the copious images of The Ideal American Girl, but something in her perceptions of those artifacts felt cleansing. All I've seen whenever I've looked at them was an obedient, grinning little monkey. I don't think Iliana was seeing solely through eyes of love, either; when it comes to a photographic image, she's uncompromising.

After four or five hours of wading around this charnel house each day, both of us are bushed. Yet she manages to get us back, either to her apartment in the Village or to Charlotte's uptown, for showers, and then she sweeps me off to a “decent” (her word) dinner, whether I'm hungry or not.

Dinner for Iliana is a ritual of civilized behavior: a not necessarily posh restaurant but one with a leisurely atmosphere, good food and service, a bottle of wine. At first it felt like an indulgent waste of time, but it does work. I relax for a bit. It's extraordinary how she manages to create graciousness in the midst of my furor. She's like a walking incarnation of that line of Baudelaire's: “
Luxe, calme, et volupté
.” What a bizarre thing to pop into my memory so long after Barbara introduced to me Baudelaire … Anyway, we sit there at dinner and for a moment I almost forget what a mess my life is. Of course, it's as daft as if the two of us were having a nice meditative chat in the trenches while the next day's battle rises over us with the dawn. But I do love being with her—and it's more than gratitude, which is also boundless. Yet I'm terribly afraid. I don't want to fall in love with Iliana. I don't want to fall in love with anyone. I don't want to prove Laurence right. I don't want to use her as some sort of liberating angel. Most of all, I cannot handle one more iota of stress.

Meanwhile, it's equally true that she relieves the stress. Shopping-bags full of Hope's unsorted financial papers, stock certificates, etc., get carried back to her Grove Street apartment each night—because it's the one place they can
be
until I organize them for the attorneys; they can't go to the loft and they certainly can't ricochet about with me from stayover to stayover. This weekend we'll take a break from cleaning the co-op and I'll go to her place and begin the sorting out, because at least some of the papers should be in the hands of Hope's lawyers before I have to go out of town next week on two speaking dates.

Meanwhile, too, back at the hospital,
she
just lies there. Dr. Grimes is being quite helpful. He says he'll have her condition stabilized in about three weeks, barring complications—but that if I can't find a nursing home and get the apartment sold to pay for it by that point, he can perhaps manage to stretch her stay in the hospital for another week or two beyond that. She has no place else to
go
. Neither does her daughter. The two of us, as she used to proclaim merrily, against the world.

Oh, Momma.

April 12, 1983

Now at Leonora's. I've been trying to keep the separation under wraps, but word is out at Athena. It's just as well, since I frankly need to know who's going out of town when, and for whom I can house-sit. Besides, as Iliana chortles, it's good for the soul to learn a little humility. If I ever doubted that women were the best folks around I'm certainly learning it all over again.

There it was, out of the blue, a call from Leonora saying that she would be taking her vacation to visit her family in Alabama for two weeks at Easter, and “would appreciate it” if I'd stay at her place on the Upper West Side, cat-sit, and look after
her
plants. No questions asked. The “feminist diplomacy” of women is awesome, though. When I went up to Leonora's so she could give me keys and instructions, she managed to reek sympathy for my situation with no mention of any situation over which she might be reeking it. She showed me around her apartment, briefing me on its idiosyncrasies, and
happened
to explain that such-and-such vase had been a wedding present to celebrate her first marriage, such-and-such candelabra a wedding present to celebrate her second, and such-and-such items (microwave oven, cable TV) divorce presents to herself to celebrate her liberations. “Sweetie,” she tossed off in passing, “I've now been married to a white man and to a black man; one from Group A and one from Group B, Chinese-restaurant-menu style. The white one wore a gold earring, the black one wore a Brooks Brothers vest, neither one took out the garbage, and both claimed I was indispensable to their happiness. Of course,” she wound up slyly, “that was peachy by me—until I saw through the satisfaction of being indispensable for irrelevancies.”

That was it. Nothing more was said.

So here I am. My major problem in this apartment is that Leonora is five-foot-ten, tall enough to be a high-fashion model—“the Radcliffe Kikuyu,” she calls herself—so I am forever climbing up on things to get at other things. I'm sure the cat food, for example, is placed at normal height for her to reach; to me it seems stored at attic level.

The only other problem is that Leonora's is quite a distance from Hope's apartment and from the hospital. I spend my life in buses and subways; only when approaching drop-dead state do I indulge in taxis. There's the co-op over in Sutton Place, way on the East Side in the Fifties; there's the hospital, also on the East Side, but twenty blocks north; there's the loft, on the West Side but farther south in Chelsea; there's Iliana on Grove Street, also on the West Side but way downtown in the Village. Yesterday—or was it the day before?—I seemed to circle the whole of Manhattan. That's not counting trips to the lawyers' offices (which are midtown), or to Athena (over in the West Side Forties jewelry district). It seems I go to Athena a lot these days, to deliver or pick up people's housekeys, to pick up or deliver free-lance manuscripts. Charlotte seems acutely sensitive to the money crisis: I'm still waiting for colleges to pay, I'm still carrying all the loft bills, I've had to cover some of Hope's urgent bills and make a payment on her medical costs as well-since her insurance records are in a mess and it will take time for the lawyers to straighten that out. Nor can I get a bank loan, because I'm free-lance and have no collateral. Never mind waving copies of your published books at a bank. They wouldn't give a two-dollar loan to George Eliot if she rose from the grave and needed a twentieth-century shirt on her back; if she didn't have a regular payroll salary, she could go floss her mill. Familiar problem: I remember Rick McPherson moaning about actors' being unable to get bank loans because of being employed “irregularly.”

Today Laurence and I crossed paths. It was at least civil. So naturally I cried for an hour afterward, sniveling on the street and pretending I had a cinder in my eye when people gawked. Also today, Hope looked directly at me, then shut her eyes against me. I sit each day for at least an hour by that hospital bed and try to talk with her:

“Hello, Momma. It's me, Julian. I love you. How're you feeling?”

Silence.

“Spring's hinting around out there, Momma, just faintly. It's still chilly, but there's a mild touch to the air.”

Silence.

“Hey, Little Momma, the doctor says you're getting better. He says your heart is strong and you're a real fighter. But you and I always knew that, huh?”

Silence.

“Would you like me to get you anything, Momma? Now that you're off intravenous and you're rehydrated, they say you can and should eat. 'Course, I know how vile hospital food is. But I could bring you some soup, or custard, or ice cream? Maybe a little chicken? You love barbecued chicken. I could smuggle some in?…”

Silence.

“Sorry I wasn't here yesterday till the evening, Momma. I came right from the airport. I had to give a speech in Kansas.”

Silence.

“I got paid for it, Momma. It wasn't a benefit.”

Silence.

I discard the wilted flowers I had brought a couple of days earlier. I put fresh flowers and fresh water in the vase on her bedtable. Silence. I kiss her hello. I kiss her goodbye. No physical response. Silence. It took me some time to get up the courage to ask Grimes whether this was her condition or not. The reply, as I feared, was that she
is
capable of speaking and does so to the nurses and to him, though in slurred language and sometimes in a “displaced, depersonalized, and disoriented” fashion. But apparently there are also times when she recognizes her favorite nurses and garbles on chattily with them. For me: silence.

The co-op dissolution moves on apace, thanks to Iliana's help. She's a dynamo. Bossy as hell, sometimes, but then again she's usually right. I simply do not see how any of this could proceed without her. She claims she has the time and the will to do it, that helping “gives her pleasure.” I fail to see how scouring that filthy apartment could give anyone pleasure, to which she replies with the omniscient “Ta ta ta.” What's more, she can be irresistibly funny in relating details of all her phone conversations about this: a crazy Argentinian exile keeping track, while I'm out of town, of the status with lawyers, realestate agents, co-op-building board, furniture and antique appraisers. I must sell whatever
is
minimally valuable—which seems to amount to the sideboard, the Sevrès plate, a few pieces of silver, her mink coat, and her jewelry—because she'll lose money on the apartment sale since there's no time to hold out for the price such a co-op normally would bring. Someone's going to get a bargain.

In the middle of all this, here I am, turtle with her home on her back, having schlepped my portable life—file folders and suitcase—to Leonora's. Each friend's home yields its own phenomena. Ginny, for instance, has few records but lots of tapes, most of them of the voice: operas, lieder, English folk songs, Bach cantati. Charlotte and Zach's tastes run to symphonies (Beethoven and Brahms), Liszt, and scads of Broadway musicals. Now I've hit Leonora's—which turns out to be Mozart, Aretha, and Grace Jones. It's all very educative.

Leonora's Siamese cat, Uhura, has great dignity yet seems content to tolerate me as her bedmate and servant in the absence of her usual attendant. It's a comfort, being around a cat again, absorbing the presence of a creature so self-possessed, so seductively demanding that her own needs be met, so liquid in her satin mobility. If only it were possible to put oneself first with the same primitive innocence.
“Luxe, calme, et volupté,”
indeed. Uhura is a welcome break from Charlotte's dogs, who were, I suspect, not fond of me, probably intuiting cat-prejudice on my part. But they really were sweet, though I hadn't particularly liked poodles before. It turns out that Charlotte herself never wanted poodles: she just loves animals and would've preferred plain mutts. But Zach would have none of that—any pets
he
was going to have must be pedigreed. Charlotte's quiet revenge is to refuse to have them clipped, nail-polished, or beribboned, “like some chic ladies'-magazine editor's pretentious petsies forgodsake.” The upshot is that Charlotte and Zach have two pure-bred poodles who contentedly shaggle about looking like mongrel lambs. Marriage, like politics, is the art of compromise—and of guerrilla war. Anyway, Charlotte claims the poodles are highly intelligent; this was not always evident. The female, Sido, acted most of the time as if she'd been secretly hitting the gin bottle: gazing at me with bloodshot eyes, leaping at shadows, dribbling slurpy kisses on my hand, face, ankle, whatever she could get hold of. The male, whose name is the basic Fido but spelled, according to his food bowl, “Phideaux” (which is either witty or fatuous, I can't decide), he's another matter. I'm not just being feminist about this. Walking those two dogs was a challenge in balance. Sido has a sauntering, weaving style. She ambles. She stops and stares at the sidewalk. She tries to kiss the shoes of strangers. Meanwhile, Phideaux was busy walking
me
. He liked to lunge down the street with me racing after, then to brake abruptly at an appealing hydrant and fling up his leg. Since he never slowed to give warning, I would go hurtling on past, dragging poor Sido with me, and frequently bowling over innocent passers-by in the process. Phideaux also thought it amusing to attempt rape on every female dog he encountered, and to growl fiercely at every male dog, especially those twice his size. The Killer Poodle, I named him. We had some anxious moments with Great Danes and Dobermans. I also spent quite a bit of energy on these walks affecting surprise at his behavior. “Why,
Phideaux!
” I would exclaim loudly, so that I could be sure of being heard by the owner of the female dog who was eyeing us with alarm and trying to extricate dog and self from the instantaneous leash tangle. “
Phideaux!
What a thing to
do!
That's not
like
you!” when actually Phideaux's character seems to be a cross between Don Juan and Genghis Khan.

I must be losing my mind, writing down such details. But writing, as always, is such a clarifier. Like prayer is for some people. Besides, moments alone like this, late at night, after editing a manuscript and before trying to fall asleep, with (somebody's) music on the phonograph, curled up in (somebody's) bed in (somebody's) apartment writing in this
(my!)
journal, are the only ventilation I have. Now I know why bag ladies mumble to themselves. I've talked myself out with Iliana, so that she now demands we talk about
any
other things—the news, art, books, politics, philosophy—to get my mind off obsessing about Hope-Laurence-co-op-nursing-homes-money-book-deadline nightmares. She's right. Although I haven't had a moment to read anything other than Hope's papers or manuscripts for Athena, or see a movie, or go to a museum or gallery in longer than I can remember. Politics of course goes on no matter what: went to a press conference last week in support of our protest against the drug companies that produce unsafe contraceptives, filled in on the picket line against the latest porn “snuff” film; did letters, petitions, lobbying phone calls. Every day I feel more like a juggler, trying to keep all the balls in the air.