Pages from a Cold Island (20 page)

I put it on the sideboard to cool, then went eagerly —a little dementedly,
I think—after the chocolate mar
ble coconut cake. For this I had only to add milk, but I found two tins of shredded coconut and to heighten the artificial flavor poured these in. To adorn the cake I found a pint can of Hershey
’
s Dutch chocolate frosting. On the cooled and sliced banana bread I spread cream cheese and made a half-dozen sandwiche
s, wrapped them individ
ually and ever so neatly in wax paper, and put them in the refrigerator against the moment I
’
d have to load the styrofoam hamper. In a pint plastic container I put radishes and celery, in another a pound of medium-old Cheddar cheese cut into delicately edible bits. Then with a flourish I frosted the chocolate marble co
conut cake with the Dutch choco
late frosting, scraped out the can with a knife, licked the knife, and cut and wrappe
d four wedges of the cake. I lo
cated half a dozen apples, a bunch of grapes, and four cans of diet (a nice touch, that!) black raspberry soda.

Was this going to be enough? Better not take a chance, I thought. By then
I was absolutely loony with in
dustry. So anxious was I to make this gesture to the ghost of Wilson that I
’
d begun to resemble the proverbial mad chef preparing dishes for that joker Jackie Kennedy! I decided to make a couple of my famous tuna fish, chopped hard-boiled egg and onion sandwiches, the kind I
’
d made for Ms. Steinem. As tartly as a maiden aunt I then primly excised the crusts from some slices of white bread (which I hadn
’
t dared do for Gloria, thinking it much too frivolous for The New Woman), and with the mixture made three of these sandwiches, wrapped and put them in the refrigerator. There was no room left in the refrigerator—it had begun to
“
swell.
”

I would have very much liked to make cucumber sandwiches but didn
’
t know how. In English novels people were always sitting about sipping tea, nibbling at cucumber sandwiches, and saying marvelously subtle and witty things. But no English novelist had ever told me how to make such a sandwich—whether one simply sliced the cucumbers, chopped them up with mayonnaise and salt and pepper, or what. Then I started to chuckle. I was thinking how nice it would be if some brilliant Limey like Anthony Burgess or John Fowles annotated, with lengthy footnotes and for Americans only, an entire English classic, something of Dickens or Jane Austen, and straight-facedly detailed just such British cultural hang-ups as the proper preparation of a cucumber sandwich. In exhaustion and laughter I then lay down on the couch until it was time to go. When I started to pack the styrofoam container I discovered the Mason jars were cracked.

“
Shee-it!
”
I spat the word into the back of my teeth and grudgingly settled for my single plastic bag of cubes.

My thinking was to take Mrs. Pcolar up behind the stone house to Flat Rock on the Sugar River where Wilson had himself picnicked for seventy years, to spread out a blanket, to settle all comfy
down, perhaps in the yoga posi
tion, to nibble all afternoon on my lovingly prepared good ies, and to let Mrs. Pcolar talk while I scribbled on my yellow lined tablet. I don
’
t know what I was after, certainly not an
“
article.
”
I knew I wanted to take something of Wilson to carry with me, and I thought that in Mrs. Pcolar
’
s laughter, her tears, some gesture, a tilt of the head, a coy shrug, some expression, grave, lightsome, even perhaps an imitation of Wilson—that in something meaningless to her I might abstract a piece of Wilson, however fleetingly minute, and in all the days ahead carry that abstract with me against my needs.

For the last dozen years of his Talcottville life, Mrs. Pcolar, a lovely Hungarian-American, acted as Wilson
’
s amanuensis. She was his summer secretary. She was his drinking, dinner and movie companion, his occasional chef. Having helped him learn Hungarian, she was his teacher. She was forever his pupil, Wilson never abdicating his role as one-man faculty. She was his
“
niece
”
Mariska
; to her he was
Kedves
Ö
d
ö
n Basci
, Dear Uncle Edmund. To describe her in
Upstate
Wilson used the Hungarian
ezermester
, master of a thousand arts. Mrs. Pcolar was also Wilson
’
s concern, his
“
problem,
”
and in those pages he wrote,
“
I never leave Talcottville nowadays without an un comfortable feeling of never being able to do justice to my relation to Mary Pcolar.
”
Most of all Mrs. Pcolar was Wilson
’
s friend. He sent her valentines, enclosing in one a handmade black paper butterfly which, on winding up a rubber band, was supposed to fly but didn
’
t. In the center of a gilt-framed heart one read,
“
I declare by this EPISTLE,
”
and overleaf,
“
That I
’
m yours should you but whistle.
”
Be
neath the verse a red plastic whistle was attached. That also didn
’
t work. On her birthdays she received cards.
“
Happy Birthday to someone who
’
s TOPS in my book!!
”
And on opening the card, and in obvious reference to
Memoirs of Hecate County
,
“
Of course my book has been banned in several states.
”
As he did to all of his close friends, he sent her at Christmas the booklets of light verse and nonsense he composed and had specially printed for the season:

A dizzy old duchess named Sarah

Designed a delightful tiara.

It was made of live shrimps,

Alternating with imps,

Who sometimes tormented the wearer.

On Mother
’
s Day he took her and her family to dinner at the Fort Schuyler Club in Utica and to memorialize the occasion inscribed the menu with a suitable sentiment. He wrote her from Wellfleet, from Cambridge, from the offices of The
New Yorker
, from Lillian Hellman
’
s New York apartment. He wrote from Israel, from Budapest, from Paris, and in the last winter of his life from Naples, Florida. On his last visit to Paris he petulantly complained that he was going to stay in his hotel room for the duration of his stay because Paris had changed so and the women no longer wore
“
pretty gowns.
”
From Florida in that last win
ter he wrote that he couldn
’
t abide being around old people. He was seventy-six. More amusing than anything, as though he were a just-published first novelist, he sent Mrs. Pcolar xeroxed copies of reviews of his books with arch notations to the effect that the reviewer may even have read the book.

As it got on toward ten, the sun was
becoming increas
ingly merciless. My upper lip was coated and perspiration made its way in rivulets down the small of my back. Now certain I
’
d come on the wrong day, I was intently watching the front of the store when I detected something that stopped my heart. Across the facade at the top of the store was a yellow and red Coke sign bearing the name
sanford drugs
, and it struck me abruptly that I wasn
’
t even at the right place! Nervously I stepped a few paces down the street to get a different perspective but, sure enough, coming out perpendicularly from the Coke sign and suspended above the walk was a white wooden sign on which in black letters was the legend
Kramer
’
s pharmacy
.

When at almost that very moment a profusely apologetic Mrs. Pcolar arrived, I asked her straightaway about the store
’
s dual identity. She laughed and said it had been Mr. Wilson
’
s doing. (Throughout the day Mrs. Pcolar was never to refer to him as anything but Mr. Wilson:
“
I never did in life. Why should I in death?
”
) Cognizant of how little given to change we upstaters are, Kramer had retained the name of the previous owner, Sanford, when he acquired the store a
dozen years before. Wilson, how
ever, knew Kramer to be the new owner and in his finickiness that things be properly called had refused to bestow on the store anything but Kramer
’
s Pharmacy, always using both words, as though down the street there existed the possibility of a conflict with
Kramer
’
s saloon
or
Kramer
’
s whorehouse
. Mrs. Pcolar, who had gone to work there shortly after Kramer took over, told him of Wilson
’
s stolid insistence; and in what one suspects was a larksome mood Kramer said if it was
Kramer
’
s Phar
macy
to Mr. Wilson it had indeed to be Kramer
’
s phar
macy: hence the new sign appended to the old, a gesture whereby Kramer didn
’
t alienate the old-timers by removing Sanford
’
s name. I love these upstate* villages, and the un
reasoning vestedness of their inhabitants, and on hearing this I laughed loudly.

In Alden Whitman
’
s front-page obituary in the New York
Time
s
(and what other newspaper in the world would have put it there?) he
’
d written that Wilson
’
s marriage to Mary McCarthy had
“
tended to be troubled
”
and that in the McCarthy recollection
everything that came under Wil
son
’
s hand was shaped into
“
an authorized version,
”
not entirely excluding Miss McCarthy herself who had in a way become Wilson
’
s version of her. She was to write:
“
Mr. Wilson said,
‘
I think you
’
ve got a talent for writing short stories.
’
So he put me off in one free room with a typewriter and shut the door,
”
which seemed to me pretty much the way
“
Mr.
”
Wilson had
“
shut the door
”
to any further dia
logue as to what this rather nondescript drugstore on Boonville
’
s Main Street should be called.

Unhappily, I very quickly came to understand that, like Kramer
’
s Pharmacy or Mary McCarthy, Mary (I asked and was told it was okay to use her given name) had also become Wilson
’
s authorized version of her. To escape the heat we went to Slim
’
s cafe a few doors south on Main Street, slid into a booth facing one another, and ordered tea. Besides my pocketful of ball-point pens, I
’
d brought along a copy of
Upstate
with the pages on which Mary was mentioned turned over at the corners, and a copy of
A Fan’s Notes
inscribed
“
For Mary Pcolar, 6/2/
’
72, Sincerely and with thanks, Frederick Exley.
”
I
’
d had a difficult time obtaining a copy of the lat
ter, and had finally got my law
yer
’
s copy on the promise to get him another, and a first edition (very easy as there was only one edition). With a razor blade I
’
d excised the page on which I
’
d inscribed it to him, and on another page I
’
d written the one to Mary. At forty-three it was all I had to offer by way of portfolio. When I presented it to Mary I offhandedly said,
“
Here
’
s a copy of my last book.
”
I wasn
’
t lying but I nevertheless de livered the line in such a way as to suggest that prior to this there
’
d been more volumes than I could at the moment recall, which in fairness might have been had I not been such an unregenerate drunk. I
’
d added the
“
and with thanks
”
in hopeful anticipation of the wonderful Wilson anecdotes Mary would pass on to me.

* To a Manhattanite “upstate” means “the uthuh siduh Oddsley” (“the other side of Ardsley”) but to true upstaters this notion verges on the laughably blasphemous. We do not even look on Albany, Schenectady, Utica, Rochester or Buffalo as upstate and feel that to be genuinely “northern” one has to know the Adirondack Mountains and the St. Lawrence Valley and towns like Old Forge and Hammond, Canton and Potsdam, Cape Vincent and Chaumont (never pronounced Shummoo as Wilson alleges in
Upstate
), Plattsburg, Gouverneur, Massena, Tupper Lake, Lake Placid—the list is as long as one cares to make it but does not include White Plains, which is “the uthuh siduh Oddsley.”

Mrs. Pcolar was a youthful-looking and strikingly handsome forty-four, not in the least reticent about her age. She had an erect sturdy bearing, and had she not been so oppressively feminine
one might have thought her some
what muscular. Save for the graying that would come with age, one was certain she
’
d look as good at sixty-four as she did now and not much different now from what she
’
d looked at twenty-four, the kind of woman—watching one
’
s own aging by comparis
on—with whom it would be unnerv
ing to grow old. Hence I was surprised to learn she
’
d once been fat.

“
Yes,
”
she emphasized, sensing my doubt as to whether fat was quite the word.
“
I was fat, ballooning up. I went to Dr. Smith
”
—the elderly Boonville doctor who
’
d min istered to Wilson and had been at his bedside when he died—
”
for some diet pills. He wouldn
’
t give them to me, he brushed me off. He told me I was too good-looking and too intelligent to lay around the house all day, that my stuffing myself was just nerves, and I ought to go to work and the weight would take care of itself. So I did. I went to work at Kramer
’
s. Then I met Mr. Wilson.
”

Mary wore her soft hair short, becomingly shorn just beneath the ears. It was light brown and wavy, attractively tinged with traces of blond coloring. By his own account in
Upstate
Wilson had once reprimanded her for making her hair too blond, which he thought unbecoming and cheap, and I smiled now to think that even from the beyond Wilson was holding dominion over her. There were the high striking Mongolian cheekbones Wilson had remarked, a facial structure inherited from her Hungarian ancestors.

What Wilson had not got were her eyes. Although small, they were beautiful and of a pale blue so luminous they appeared flecked with a flashing silve
r quality, an incandes
cence so disarming that after a time I found I could not look steadily at her and rest easy. She wore a well-cut sleeveless orange dress, one of the new wrinkleless double-knits she
’
d bought for a trip to Budapest (on her way back through London, Mary was with a note from Wilson to visit Stephen Spender), a simple gold bracelet, a gold watch, and at the base of her strong columnar white throat a gold onyx brooch pinned to her dress.

The dress had been Wilson
’
s favorite.
“
Mr. Wilson called it his orange sherbert dress.
”
He had had his father
’
s gold-rimmed spectacles fitted with his own prescription—
“
Mr. Wilson called them his Ben Franklin glasses
”
—and whenever she wore the dress he
’
d reach up with his right hand, with exaggerated drama lower the spectacles to the tip of his nose, look searchingly over their tops, issue a pleasurable
Ahhhh
and say,
“
You have on my orange sherbert dress.
”
When she wore something else, Wilson would go through the same charade with his glasses but with mock exasperation at Mary
’
s extravagance say,
“
Another new dress—
again?
”
Her well-made legs were sheathed in flesh-colored pantyhose and on her feet she wore beige-colored shoe
s with squat blue heels and moc
casin-style toes about which were decorative little gold chains. Even the shoes were Wilson
’
s doing. Feeling auda
cious Mary had one day worn spiked heels and in a huff Wilson had remarked that
No, no they would not at all do
. Wilson had wanted her to wear
“
pumps.
”
Mary had almost cried,
“
But these are pumps!
”
when it abruptly occurred to her that Wilson believed that pumps were necessarily low-heeled or walking shoes.

“
And you never corrected him?
”
I asked, laughing.

“
No one—at leas
t not me—ever corrected Mr. Wil
son.
”
Mary sat pensively.
“
Besides, I guess now I
’
ll always think of low-heeled shoes as pumps.
”

“
I guess I will, too.
”

I
’
d asked Mary to begin at the beginning of the end, to tell me about the last days, and though I tried to take down most of what she said I found myself impatiently saying,
“
Yeah, yeah, but Wilson covered all that in
Upstate
:
’
Then suddenly it occurred to me what was happening. It wasn
’
t so much Mary
’
s memory, h
er intelligence, or her imagina
tion, which were all perfectly capable, as that she was so intimidated by Wilson she felt
her recollection of their rela
tionship must necessarily correspond with his, that under the distinguished Farrar, Straus & Giroux imprimatur
Upstate
had been set forth against posterity
’
s judgment and she daren
’
t contradict or elaborate for fear of toying with that judgment. Had I told her
Upstate
was one of Wilson
’
s lesser efforts, one that probably wouldn
’
t have seen print had it been offered over another
’
s name, not only wouldn
’
t Mary have believed me but it occurred to me that Mary herself as a person in the Wilsonian drama would have been eliminated along with
Upstate
and I couldn
’
t say this with
out running the risk of hurting her.