Sea Lovers (22 page)

The Zinnias were a golden couple, astonishingly successful given the meagerness of their talents and the tedium of their lives. They never stopped congratulating themselves. Whenever they took a little trip, like this one, there was a whole spate of poems about the trip. They wrote poems about their spoiled, mean children as if they were visiting deities. Edith recalled the last time she'd seen the vicious daughter, a dumpy, overweight child who sat down on the ottoman next to Edith, balancing a plate of brownies and a plastic glass of punch, and asked with an insinuating smirk, “Are you and Isabel going to get married?”

Before the rift the Zinnias had been friendly to Edith, inviting her to their crowded parties, where the wine was cheap and the flower arrangements were large and composed of weeds. Edith politely attended their readings, keeping her mind firmly on something else—a novel she had read or a mental image of Isabel's naked back. What she knew about their personal lives she learned from their poems.

Edith placed Lulu's book back on the stack next to her husband's. She really had not thought when she wrote “Tame Poems” that Lulu would recognize herself as the subject. “Tame poems, docile, bleating lambs, / no threats, no surprises.” Edith thought it harmless enough, and general as well, though there was one line near the end that clearly referred to Lulu's poem “You Protect Me.”

But as soon as the poem was published in an obscure journal, everyone at the college seemed to know about it. Michael Mellon took her aside after a department meeting and told her that Lulu was devastated. There were no more party invitations. Mark cut her at the graduation; Lulu was too sick to attend.

Publishing “Tame Poems” proved that Edith was angry and rash. Michael told her that Mark announced at a dinner party that Edith was eaten up with jealousy, because he and Lulu were devoted to each other, whereas Isabel was flagrantly unfaithful to her. The Zinnias were powerful in poetry circles; they edited anthologies and sat on prize committees. That year Mark edited a big anthology. Edith was conspicuously absent from this collection.

Isabel laughed at the whole business. “Wonderful,” she said. “There are never any chairs at those awful parties, and the food is always fish paste on white bread.”

One summer night shortly after the anthology snub, Isabel and Edith sat on their front porch splitting a bottle of champagne to celebrate Isabel's return from a course of master classes in the city. Isabel was in high spirits. “Let's walk,” she said, pulling Edith up by both arms. “Let's stroll past the Zinnias' and see if they're having a party.” It seemed an amusing idea, and Edith slipped her arm through Isabel's thinking that Mark and Lulu had never known a single moment as joyful as this one, strolling out into the quiet, tree-lined street, giddy from champagne, the warm night air, and each other's company. What if there was a party and the guests standing on the porch looked out to see Edith and Isabel, indifferent to their feast, nocturnal and svelte, like panthers slinking past a gathering of stupid, yelping hyenas? Who would envy whom?

But when they got to the house, there was only one dim light on near the back. “What is it, ten o'clock?” Isabel said. “And the Zinnias are snug in their beds.” This was funny too. Edith pictured Lulu and Mark in matching flannel pajamas, plaid, or with pictures of teddy bears on them, curled up under the covers in their narrow four-poster. Long ago Lulu had insisted that Edith and Isabel take themselves on a tour of the house, and Isabel had snorted at their rickety antique bed with its thin pillows and grandmotherly quilt. “The scene of a grand passion,” Isabel said, even going so far as to sit on the edge, pronouncing it “rock hard, completely unforgiving.”

“Wake up, Mark and Lulu,” Isabel sang out as they stood looking up at the dark house. “Your house is not on fire.” Edith chuckled, then said, “Hush. They might wake up.” Isabel drew her closer to the house while she laughed and made a mock struggle. “No, no, be careful, be quiet,” she said, stumbling over a yard hose. “We don't want to wake the great American poets.” When they were past the porch, Isabel said, “I have such a great idea,” and she pulled Edith behind a bush so that they were hidden from the street and right up against the wall of the house. “What is it?” Edith said. “What are we doing here?” Then Isabel put her arms around Edith's waist and held her close, kissing her neck and shoulder. “My Edith,” she said. “You are so adorable when you are tipsy.”

“Me?” Edith protested. “You drank much more than I did.”

“But I am never drunk,” Isabel said, kissing her on the mouth. Edith closed her eyes and gave in to the embrace. It was true, she thought, Isabel was never drunk.

Edith's blouse was unbuttoned and Isabel's halter top was around her waist when the light went on and Mark stepped out onto the porch. “What's going on out here?” he said in the tough voice of the outraged homeowner protecting his domain. Did Mark have a gun? Edith thought. Isabel took her hand and whispered, “Run!” They burst past the bushes, clutching their clothes to their breasts and running hard until they got to their own porch. Then they staggered inside and fell on the couch, laughing like bad children.

Wild-a nights, Edith thought. The bookstore clerk approached and asked if he could be of assistance.

“I'm looking for a book of poetry,” Edith said. “
Unnatural Disasters
, by Edith Sharpe.”

“We don't have that,” the boy said indifferently. He had a long face, pockmarked skin, and a prissy British accent. “We don't carry much American poetry.” He walked away to another customer, who was going through a stack of travel books.

Edith went out into the street, still so absorbed in her thoughts about the Zinnias that she nearly collided with a
motorino
parked on the thin strip of cobblestone that passed for a sidewalk. When the awful business with Isabel's student Melanie blew up, Mark was as hateful and stupid as the rest of them. But one afternoon Lulu had come into Edith's office, closing the door behind her and leaning against it. “I just want to tell you,” she said, “that I don't think these charges against Isabel are entirely fair.”

“Of course they aren't,” Edith said. “But no one really cares about that much, do they?”

“Melanie Pringle was my student last year.”

“Did she make a pass at you?”

Lulu's eyes widened at this thought. “No. But she's no innocent.” Then, clearly horrified by what she had just said, she pulled the door open and slipped out into the hall.

“Turn it off, turn it off,” Edith said, rising from her chair in desperation. “I can't look at any more breasts.”

Isabel scowled. “You are so puritanical,” she observed. She changed the channel to a panel show in which three women were perched on a narrow couch gibbering into one another's cleavage. Edith stalked toward the kitchen. “It's not puritanical to detest seeing women degraded to nothing but mammary glands on stilts, which appears to be the highest goal of the female in this ridiculous country.”

Isabel studied the television screen. “You're jealous because they are so beautiful and they enjoy being beautiful.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” Edith said to the stove. “I am not jealous of women who choose to be bimbos.” She pulled the coffeepot from the rack and poured water into the base. “Do you want coffee?” she shouted.

Isabel clicked off the television. “Yes,” she called back.

Edith struggled with the espresso packet, attempting to open it with a dull knife. “There are scissors in the drawer,” Isabel advised her from the doorway. Edith looked at her, scowling as the knife pulled free of the packet and the coffee exploded across the counter. “Surely you can see these women are just cows in need of milking?” she said, reaching for the sponge.

Isabel smiled. “They do love their breasts,” she said. “And why shouldn't they? They're lovely. I've never wanted large breasts myself; that's impossible for a dancer. It just doesn't work to have anything bouncing around. But if I had breasts as pretty as Giovanna Bottini's, I certainly wouldn't wear mannish suits like the news announcers in America.”

“Who is Giovanna Bottini?”

“The one with the talk show.”

Edith tightened the top of the
caffettiera
as hard as she could, set it on the burner, and lit the flame with the sparker. So Giovanna Bottini was not the woman at the reading. “How can you have a talk show if everyone is preoccupied with presenting her breasts and no one listens?” she said gloomily. “It's depressing. It's like the poetry reading. Why have a poetry reading if no one is going to listen? Why not just have a party and spend the money on food?”

“Oh yes,” Isabel replied. “It's so much better to sit in an icy little room reading to dreary overweight women in parkas who tell you how liberating it is for them to think about how much you despise men.”

“I don't despise men, Isabel, as you well know. I have many friends who are men. I hate the patriarchy and with good cause, as a purely cursory reading of history will prove.”

The coffeepot began to hiss. “I'll heat the milk,” Isabel said.

When they had carried their cups to the table, Isabel pursued the subject. “Why do these Italian women bother you so much?” she asked seriously. “You don't mind it when I wear almost nothing and leap about on the stage. Why isn't that depressing?”

“It's completely different,” Edith said. “You're an artist. It's not your body you put on display, it's your art. You've made your body into something sublime with which you express an ideal of beauty that has nothing to do with tits on parade.”

Isabel considered this for a moment. “No, that's not true,” she concluded. “For me, dance is entirely sensual and erotic. I don't care about ethereal ideals of beauty. I use my body as a medium for the expression of extreme states of desire.”

Right, Edith thought. She set her cup down carefully in the saucer. “How can you say that to me?” she said, glaring at her own hand. She was never able to look at Isabel when she was angry.

Isabel allowed the harshness of this question to darken the air between them. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

Edith kept her eyes lowered, running through the menu of cutting replies that appeared behind her eyes.

Isabel answered her own question. “You're talking about Melanie Pringle,” she said. “All this is about Melanie Pringle, isn't it? All this hostility toward sexuality and beauty. I thought if we came here we could get away from all that and have a pleasant time together, but I see you've packed Melanie up and brought her along.”

“Just don't tell me about your extreme states of desire,” Edith said, “and maybe I won't be reminded of what they cost us.”

“There was nothing extreme about it,” Isabel protested. “She waited in the dressing room until the others were gone and she put her arms around me and kissed me.”

“What made her think she could do that?” Edith asked coldly. “She must have been pretty confident about what your response would be.”

“She's a beautiful, rich young woman,” Isabel replied. “No one tells her no. She's made out of confidence, that's all she is. And when she realized I didn't care for her, she got angry and decided to destroy me.”

“Was that the reason?” Edith sniffed. “That's reassuring.”

“It's a stupid mess, she's a stupid girl, but it has nothing to do with us. We can't let her drive us apart. Now that would be folly.”

Edith felt something in her chest contracting, as if her heart had turned into a fist. “I guess it just doesn't occur to you that I might feel humiliated,” she said. “That having my colleagues all fall silent when I enter a room because they've been talking about you, because they feel sorry for me, that having Lulu Zinnia, for God's sake, look at me with pity because I live with you, that I find that humiliating, and that this stupid mess, as you call it, has everything to do with us. It will probably be the end of us, especially if you lose your job.”