My Nine Lives (12 page)

Instead we turned to Teddy. It was not the first time that George and I had brought our difficulties to him. Teddy was a very simple person, and he hadn't had much education either, unlike George and myself who had been sent to the best schools. But there was a sort of wisdom in Teddy—even Father had called him “a wise fool”—which had nothing to do with education or reading books, nor even with his experience of knocking around from place to place and living on nothing. It was more something inborn, maybe even part of his simplicity, which was a kind of selflessness in him. He had a lack of self-regard that made him as tolerant of others as most of us are of ourselves. It also gave him understanding—anyway, he understood Maggie: “She wanted Lisa to really know her, know what sort of a life she has had.”

“Did she tell you any of that?” we asked Teddy.

“Some of it,” Teddy said.

“About why Father had turned her out?”

“Not exactly, but I guessed. You see, that's what's so great about Maggie: that she's been right down in the dirt and then she's come up like some beautiful flower. Lotus, is it—that flower growing out of mud? And that's what she wanted Lisa to know, where she's been; you can't really appreciate what she's grown into if you're ignorant of that.”

Certainly, George and I regarded her with new eyes. In comparison with her, how innocent, how blank were the two
of us who had started off and continued with every material advantage; and how easy it had been, under these circumstances, to keep ourselves immaculate—well, at least socially. But even while respecting her more, I couldn't help thinking about the dirt Teddy had mentioned and to notice anew that the hem of Maggie's long gown was soiled from trailing on the ground; also—something I struggled to hide from myself—that she perspired heavily and did not, it seemed, bathe every day. I wondered whether George shared these unworthy thoughts; I was sure that Teddy did not, for he never thought ill of anyone.

Meanwhile the week went on, with Maggie as happy at the end of it as she had been at the beginning, and even more comfortable as though sinking deeper into our sofas. But George and I became more uncomfortable at the approach of the weekend, and with it Lisa's arrival. Of course there was no question of Maggie leaving, but we wished we had some explanation for Lisa as to why it was essential for her to stay. In any case, we longed to hear and talk more about our plans—about her plans for us, for our Center. The days passed and Maggie said nothing but continued to lie on her favorite sofa. She was now reading a great deal, turning the pages very quickly—as quickly as she ate her meals, which she always finished long before we did, especially George who masticated very thoroughly. We circled around her, waiting for the right moment to raise our subject, but she remained entirely engrossed in her book.

At last, the day before Lisa's expected arrival, in desperation almost, we stood before her. I cleared my throat nervously; George, just behind me, cleared his: “Maggie, we must talk.”

She looked up, took off the glasses she wore for reading, and gazed at us in kind inquiry.

“The house,” I said.

“Our Center,” George said.

“Oh yes,” she agreed, “we must have a chat about it all. There's plenty of time—Art is short but Life is long—no the other way around, I always get mixed up.” She gave her gruff laugh and put on her glasses to continue reading, only looking up briefly to tell us, “This is such marvelous stuff—in translation unfortunately but still—” She turned another page.

“Lisa is arriving tomorrow.”

“I know it,” she said. “I'm well aware of the fact.” This time she didn't bother to look up; what she was reading at that moment was so astonishing that she made an exclamation point in the margin with the little gold pencil she had borrowed from me.

But next morning she was transformed, and so was the house. She rallied our staff—a local widow and her teenage daughter—and hired extra help to scour and polish everything in sight. She herself whirled around the kitchen, where all the pots and pans had been taken out, and she stirred in one after another and added and tasted and added some more. When everything was ready—the house gleamed and the staff were exhausted—she went up to change and did not come down until Lisa and her board members drove up. It was only when they were already in the entrance hall that she began to descend the stairs, and before she had quite reached the end of them, she stood still and called down, “Welcome!” Everyone looked up to where she stood—in a brand-new lilac gown, hung about with jeweled chains and an aigrette in her gilded hair. “George,” she murmured, so that he stepped forward and held out his hand to help her down the remaining steps: “The Princess,” he introduced her. Smiling, she
stretched out her hand to the guests—four burly American stockbrokers, who might have kissed it, had they known how.

She had laid the table in the dining room for what she called luncheon, with every refinement that Father had purchased and that we ourselves had never put to use. She had also selected the wine from Father's cellar and knew how to discuss its merits with Lisa's guests, who had all made enough money to be connoisseurs (one of them had a little diary in which to check up on the vintage). It was only after serving coffee and liqueurs that she started her tour of the house, flinging open doors and explaining all its beauties. We followed in her wake, astonished by her expertise. During her stay here, she must have studied every ornament on every mantelpiece and estimated the worth of all the pictures and lamps and carpets and hangings that Father had bought. And after the house, she led them around the grounds—the apple orchard and the fishpond and the stone fountain with benches around it; and if there had been time, she would have taken them for a row on the lake where two majestic swans were floating as if specially placed there. The guests—and they seemed to be hers now—had to get back to the city, though she made them promise to return the following weekend and bring their wives; and before they left, she insisted on giving them tea, which she served the way she had drunk it in her days as a Russian, with lemon and a spoonful of raspberry jam.

Later, when they had gone, Lisa thanked her. “My pleasure,” Maggie said—and she kissed Lisa, again in the Russian way and this time Lisa did not wipe her mouth. For the rest of the weekend, they spent most of their time with each other. It appeared they had a great deal to talk about, and when Lisa left on Sunday evening, she hardly nodded to us but told Maggie that she would be back with all the details.
What details? We could only ask this question of each other, for the moment Lisa left, Maggie again became engrossed in her reading.

Teddy was hopeful: “Don't you see? They're planning for our Center.”

“Then why don't they tell us?” George said. “Why don't they talk to us? Why doesn't she?” His large face sagged, the way it did when he was disappointed in love. I saw him wandering by the lake where he had walked arm and arm and deep in conversation with Maggie. He was always alone now—at night too, for she no longer came to his bedroom, he admitted, and when he tried to go to hers, he found the door locked.

Teddy attempted to keep up our spirits; he was absolutely sure that all Maggie's plans were for us. She was bringing Lisa around too, he promised, that was why she had been so nice to Lisa's colleagues; and maybe even—maybe, he smiled at this possibility on his rosy horizon—she was working to collect funds from Lisa's firm to make the structural additions and alterations that would be necessary to turn the house into our Center. “It's going to cost,” he warned us. He led us from room to room, pointing out their potential, and in the process made us as excited as himself. We longed for Maggie to join in our tour and unfold her plans, which were sure to be even grander than ours. But she continued to lie on the sofa, rapidly turning the pages of some great work of literature.

Lisa didn't wait till the weekend—she came in the middle of the week, and now it was she and Maggie who walked around the house discussing alterations. At the weekend more board members arrived, and some of them brought their
wives; they swarmed all over the place, each one with a different suggestion for changing it. No one seemed to know who we were, and Lisa and Maggie were too busy to introduce us. It was late at night when the visitors left, and by then the two of them were exhausted and went straight to bed. George said we must wake them at once and demand an explanation. There was this about George—his usual self was mild and amenable, but when roused he took on some of Father's imperious personality. Teddy and I had to pull him away from Maggie's locked door and persuade him to postpone his confrontation till next morning. At last he went off to his room, stamping his feet the way he had done as a small boy to show displeasure.

Teddy and I sat up in bed discussing the situation. It was nice to have him with me, comforting me, but I was sorry to think of George brooding alone, so we went in to him. We found him sitting up in bed, with the tufts of hair that still ringed his head standing up on end in anger. “It's outrageous,” he said the moment we entered. But he seemed glad to have us there to share our troubles. He was cynical, bitter. “Are you still trying to tell us that she's arranging for the Center? For us?” he asked Teddy.

“Well,” said Teddy cautiously, “she's arranging for something.”

“Yes, for herself. No doubt she's had a lot of practice at that.”

Teddy had to agree but couldn't suppress a smile, probably thinking of all Maggie's shifts and arrangements, or at least those he himself had witnessed when they had traveled together.

“Tomorrow she packs her bags,” George said.

Teddy and I cried out in protest—as we had done when Father had issued the same order, more or less in the same
words. “But Lisa is so fond of her!” we had protested to Father, reminding him how Maggie let little Lisa play with her lipstick and try on her high-heeled shoes. Now too Teddy and I said, “What about Lisa?”

“I don't know why we have to be so scared of Lisa,” George grumbled.

But he knew as well as we did that it was
for
her that we were scared. He had lived through her teen years with us and had tried to help her. We had all had psychological problems ourselves, but Lisa's took a different turn from any of ours. I always thought of mine as part of the creative life: for how can one hope to recreate emotional and psychological turmoil unless one has lived through it, every bit of the way? So I regarded my sessions with my various analysts—I changed them in the course of my various phases—as not so very different from the theater workshops I attended. But Lisa's relationships with her analysts were more clinical, requiring medication and a spell in a sanatorium. Teddy had assured us that it was nothing terribly serious—“Not, oh my Lord no, like my poor Mama who was completely—oh my Lord yes,” he concluded in sad remembrance of his mother. And it was true—when Lisa grew older and gained confidence through her competence in business, and with the help of her anti-depressants, she became calmer, steadier. But we remained nervous about her condition, handling her with care and avoiding any kind of confrontation that might upset her.

We didn't hesitate to confront Maggie, though we waited until Lisa had gone back to New York. Maggie took us on with a sort of sweet candor, denying nothing. She confirmed that she had undertaken to help Lisa convert the house into a retreat for businessmen, for their conferences, their stag parties, and for family holidays taken in rotation. She explained to us the structural changes that would have to be
made—she had it all at her fingertips. Of course it would take a lot of organization; and Lisa had asked her to stay on and oversee that stage as well as afterward to be a resident manager, a permanent hostess responsible for the smooth running of the retreat and the entertainment of the guests.

“And you've agreed?” George said. He had listened to her in deadly calm, rocking backward slightly on his heels and with his arms folded.

“I could hardly refuse dear Lisa,” Maggie smiled.

“No. But what a pity that you won't be here. What a pity that you're going up this minute to pack your bags and get out of here. This minute! Pronto!” he cried—up to then he sounded as calm as Father had done but on this last he became more the George we knew.

“Goodness. How excitable you are,” Maggie said with a kindly smile. “But that's you—the three of you. It's your artistic temperaments, of course; your charm . . . Don't be silly, George. I can't go.”

“Oh you can't?” George said. “Then let me show you how you can.”

“Yes—and what about Lisa when she comes back on Saturday? With her Big Boss—the one who has to take the final decision. Lisa is trembling in her shoes. She tells me he's a hard nut to crack and will need some very delicate handling.”

“Oh yes: handling. That's your specialty,” George said, bitter now more than angry.

“So you think that's what I've done? Handled you?” And she looked around the three of us before continuing: “Don't forget I've been turned out of this house and yet I came back. Why, why do you think I did that, swallowed my pride—oh yes, I have some, but I swallowed it and came back. Why? Why did I do that? For whose sake, George?”

My poor sweet brother: he was shuffling his feet, he was embarrassed, he was shy. Yet he wanted to speak, to answer her, have a scene with her the way he used to with our mother. Teddy and I wandered away to leave them alone, and when we all met up again, a reconciliation had taken place. It was how his scenes with our mother had also regularly ended.

That night George came into our bedroom and said, “She's right, you know.”

He began to explain to us whatever it was she had explained to him. He appeared so convinced that we pretended to be so, too. Yet I was sad and wanted to ask, “What about everything she promised us?” Although I didn't say it out loud, George answered as if I had. He assured us—as she had assured him, and she had had all day to do it—that what was being planned was more important than our ambitions. It was—“
Real,
Helen. Real life . . . Life is long and Art is short.”