Muse: A Novel (21 page)

“All the forces that play on human beings were at work in and on Ida. This, I think, is the secret of her astounding popularity with everyone, from Brother Elliott Blossom, who is here with us in the front row, to the Common Reader out there in the wide world. Ida was the Common Writer in a way that was and is and ever shall be entirely her own. She is Walt and Emily and Herman and Tom and Wallace and Hilda and Gertrude all rolled into one. We shall never see her like again.”

Blossom spoke, too, at mind-numbing length, and Pepita Erskine, to Paul’s surprise, recalling her time with Ida at Esalen in the sixties. W. S. Merwin represented Ida’s younger poet-peers and Abe Burack the prose writers, and Evan Halpern, now miraculously converted to unstinting approval of Paul’s goddess, the critics; last of all was Alan Glanville, the rising young Stanford scholar whom Sterling had just commissioned to write Ida’s biography.

Homer, never one for solemnities, left as soon as he decently could, but Paul stayed to the bitter end (the speechifying went on for an excruciating two and a half hours).

At the reception afterward in the upstairs gallery lined with anodyne paintings by the academy’s artist members, he finally approached Sterling.

“Well, hello, Paul. Long time no see. How’s Homer?”

“Very well. He was here, but he had to leave. Your remarks were beautiful; perfect, I thought.”

“Ida and I had a very strong connection, you know. A profound bond,” he drawled. Paul could tell he’d said it a thousand times on as many campuses. Paul was having a hard time picking up on what Sterling was feeling, not that it was ever all that easy to tell. He wasn’t a WASP for nothing. “Thanks for your letter,” he added, referring to the condolence note Paul had written him about Ida.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been more in touch. Things have been insanely busy at work. As a matter of fact, though, there’s something I need to talk to you about that came up in Venice. May I call you tomorrow?”

“Please do.” Sterling raised his left eyebrow quizzically in a characteristic gesture of—what? “I’ll be up at the farm.”

Sterling was tackled by Angelica Blauner, the painter, who had been the second wife of his chum the translator and poet Oswald Fessenden. Paul chatted nonsensically for another hour with Blossom and Glanville and Sterling’s daughter, Ida Bernstein, “Ida B,” as he’d come to think of her. He introduced himself to Count Moro, but the man,
who was out of his element in English, only nodded vaguely, clearly unaware of Paul’s involvement with Ida or her book.

He also managed to stay on the other side of the room from Roz Horowitz. How was he going to explain things to Roz? She had been Ida’s loyal agent for decades, one of the first to take on a poet as a client. Why had Ida left her out of the picture?
Mnemosyne
was bound to be a colossal hit. Roz was not going to take kindly to being cut out of the excitement, not to mention her 10—or was it 15?—percent.

Should he have told her right away about what had happened in Venice? Possibly. But whatever and whenever Paul told her, she was going to go ballistic, and in his bones, he knew their relationship was over. Which was a shame, because he had always enjoyed Roz, and they’d done excellent work together. After all, it was she who had sent him to see Ida in the first place.

Ida had put him in an incredible pickle. He was going to toss and turn that night, and not only because of all the cheap wine he’d knocked back at the reception. He hated being on the wrong side of people he liked or admired. Only the fact that
Mnemosyne,
sitting quietly on his desk like a smoking kryptonite nugget, now belonged to him consoled him.

And it did, he had to admit. Big-time.

“Sterling, it’s Paul Dukach.” He was at his desk, hunched over the phone, an encouraging mug of coffee within reach.

“Good morning, Paul,” said Sterling, always the gentleman. And then, as ever, “How’s Homer?”

“He’s well, I’m sure—though I haven’t seen him yet today. How is it up there?”

“Sunny and wickedly cold. We got three inches overnight—after I got home, luckily—and the wind is whipping it around in the meadow. But tell me about your visit with dear Ida. We haven’t had a real chat since your trip.”

“I know, and I’m sorry about that. We must set a date.” He took a sip. “It was one of the extraordinary afternoons of my life, Sterling. We discussed the notebooks, as I told you, and a thousand other things. I learned an enormous amount. But here’s the thing I need to tell you.” Paul put his mug down. “She gave me something. She gave me a manuscript.”

“She did
what
?”

“A book of poems. She said it was her last. And now, unfortunately, I guess it will be.”

“Well, why haven’t you sent it over?”

“That’s what’s so difficult. I don’t know quite how to tell you this, but, you see—she asked me not to. She gave it to me and told me she wanted me to see to its publication after her death.”

There, he’d said it.

“That’s the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard in my life! You can’t be serious. I’ve done all her work, every single book, she and Arnold and Denise and Robert—every blasted one of them. They depend on me. I’ve always been here for them. I don’t believe you. It’s … Oh! Now I get it! Now I see. You’re out to cheat me, you and that fraudulent boss of yours!”

“I could never do that, Sterling. I think you know how I feel about you. But it was something Ms. Perkins expressly asked me to do. She must have had her reasons, though she didn’t tell me what they were. She wrote me a letter …”

“I’ll bet she did. I bet you dictated it and made her sign it. You and Homer Stern. You’re a traitor. A traitor! And after all I’ve done for you. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer. I never want to see your miserable, snot-nosed little fairy face again! I—”

There was clattering on the other end of the line, the sound of footsteps, a shout. Then the line went dead.

Sterling Wainwright’s memorial service was likewise held in the auditorium of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a few weeks after his cousin Ida’s, with more or less the same crowd in attendance.
Il Catullo americano
had, much to his pride and joy, been elected a member of the august body the previous year, in recognition of his services to literature.

Sterling’s daughter, Ida Bernstein, had asked Paul, as one of her father’s most faithful apostles, to be among the speakers, along with Elliott Blossom; Svetlana Chandos; Sterling’s last poetic flame, Charysse Hodell; and several others. Paul, still traumatized by Sterling’s death, hadn’t known what to say to Ida B about his involvement in his hero’s demise. He kept his remarks brief, reverent, and, he hoped, witty. Afterward, Bree, Ida, and Sterling III, the spitting image of his father as a dashing young man, whom Paul was meeting for the first time, all thanked him warmly for his words.

Homer, luckily, was not in attendance.

Before long, rumors about the existence of Ida Perkins’s mysterious last book started to circulate in the blogosphere,
having been anonymously planted by Homer’s publicity guru, Seth Berle. The crescendo of speculation became such that Seth suggested they might want to issue some sort of statement explaining that they and not Impetus were going to be publishing Ida’s last book.

Paul, though, was leery of offending the Wainwrights. Ida had been
the
Impetus author par excellence, after A.O., and Paul had still not found a way to explain to Ida and Charlie Bernstein, who, after Sterling’s death, were now running his company, that P & S was going to be doing her last book. Luckily, Ida’s will specified that her fourth and final husband, Leonello Moro, had no claim on her literary or personal property, as she had none on his. In fact, apart from her literary estate and her clothes and jewelry and a few pictures, Ida turned out to have owned almost nothing.

Beyond this, Paul was naturally concerned that the Wainwrights, and Ida B in particular, would be disturbed by the book’s contents, which were bound to be an unwelcome surprise to say the least, and by the role he himself was playing in its publication. (He wasn’t so worried by Bree; he thought she might take secret pleasure in the news that Maxine had not been an utter saint—and that Sterling had suffered an erotic comeuppance of his own.)

Ida B was not Maxine’s daughter, and though they had always been cordial and eventually much more, a certain natural distance had existed between them. But Ida, inde
pendent and clear-eyed and even caustic about Sterling as she was capable of being, was nevertheless fiercely loyal to her father’s memory. There was no way around it;
Mnemosyne
was going to be hugely problematic for her.

It was Morgan, of course, who came up with the solution.

“Tell Ida B that Sterling told you he named her after Ida—Perkins, that is, not Wainwright. I think it’s true, by the way. Sure, he had the cover of his grandmother’s name to make it all look hunky-dory, but he was always entranced with Ida P, there’s no doubt about it. If Ida B can understand that, if she can be made to feel an affinity with her namesake, I think she’ll come around.”

Paul decided to risk it. What did he have to lose, after all? There was nothing else in his arsenal.

To his amazement and relief, it worked like a charm. Paul met Ida and Charlie Bernstein for dinner at a hole-in-the-wall in the Village one evening and told them the whole story of his visit to Ida P in Venice, handing them a copy of the manuscript of
Mnemosyne
as they said good night. He spent a few anxious days waiting for their response, but, as Morgan predicted, their worldly good natures and common sense saved the day. Ida B was moved by the book, and flattered, too, Paul could tell—the affiliation with his father’s old flame made her feel more connected to Sterling, who hadn’t paid his children all that much attention, not even
his unswervingly faithful if occasionally gimlet-eyed daughter. Morgan was right: once Ida B had gotten used to the idea, this new bombshell of a book allowed her to identify with Ida P—and, who knows, perhaps also with Maxine, who had been neglected by Sterling in a different way.