Three Rivers (7 page)

Isabel thought about those years. Were they the happiest? No, in retrospect she had to admit they were not, but they were exciting.

New York at the time of the nation’s great transition: America’s moment of external Fascism was over; the American dream was having yet another revival. The so-called second-class citizens of America — artists, writers, movie people, anyone creative and with a bit of courage — were becoming America’s new first-class citizens.

The time when they could form such obscenities as the Un-American Activities Committee to investigate Hollywood writers, painters or anyone that might influence another human being against the American way of life had just ended. Political discussions began to reappear on the college campuses. University professors, who were afraid to speak for fear that they might be misinterpreted, lose their jobs and be hauled up before Joe McCarthy and his despicable Mr. Schine, could now speak their minds. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been burned not in the electric chair, but at the stake. When they pulled that switch, the shock reverberated through the States. The reality was that Americans, discontented with their country and life, had been executed. “The Land of the Free” had been in grave danger.

All this had been dragged out, fought and was now behind America. It was another victory for democracy, or a victory of sorts at least.

The painters who, during the Depression, painted murals in post offices all over the United States in order to survive in their own medium, banded together in groups so that they could afford the price of a studio. Only some were Communists, but all were considered Bohemian or to lead a Bohemian life. They were no longer young except in heart, and their struggle to survive led them everywhere, even to the Manhattan art galleries. Then the dealers discovered them, dragging them up from the Village to the East Sixties in force. The dealers created a great American art market. A de Kooning painting that
could be bought for $500 in the mid-fifties would be sold now for $50,000, if you could get a dealer to release one. Mr. America himself — he might be a shoe manufacturer from Boston, an insurance man from Connecticut, a toilet manufacturer from Wisconsin — now embraced the artist, the new first-class citizen.

And there I was, thought Isabel, right in the middle of all this with a handsome, blond, elegant man who was a painter, and a Bohemian. Who suffered for Art’s sake, but left America to live like a prince in the art world. He had returned because America was now ready to recognize his talent. This beautiful man who walked like a prince through the galleries, and charmed the dealers with his looks, his elegance, and his house and studio near Picasso in the south of France, hawked his paintings and himself not to the highest bidder, but to the most influential buyer, his eyes ever on the future.

How I used to close my eyes to his whoring is easy to understand. I was in love, and so very young. He chose to live with me, he made love to me, but he never exploited me. He did not have to because I gave him everything …. Was he not a prince?

While I dined with friends at the Café Nicholson, Romeo Salta or Le Pavillon, he stayed in his studio to paint. I would go alone to stay out of his way, then would come home to make him dinner. I had nothing but admiration for him. When he went out and socialized without me, all in the name of Art, I stayed at home and waited. When we entertained the pundits of the art world, I had nothing but admiration for him.

He thought about his exhibitions, and his paintings, and how many were sold, and how many were reserved, and who had bought them, and what the reviews said, and who had to be charmed for the next step up the rung of success. He thought about the paint, canvas and new brushes he needed, about how his house in the south of France needed a new roof and how the garden needed so much more done to it. He thought only about what he needed, would paint all in the name of Art. I believed in him and loved him, and so we lived together in secret (again for Art’s sake; it was better for his career).

He once told me, “All the flowers in the world are for me.” I remember asking, “What about me, don’t I get any flowers?” He answered, “No, you have my paintings.”
Then I was touched and in love. Now I have fresh flowers and no paintings. Strange that now when I think of it, the only time we really were together was when we had sex. All the rest was not love, or happiness. It was the excitement of those years in New York.

Here he sits, this American from the Midwest who has lived in Europe for most of his adult life. This man who thinks of himself as a prince of France, and of the art world. I never knew how he really saw me all those years ago ….

Isabel reached for her coffee and drank the very dregs of it, then swished the remainder of the coffee around in the bottom of the cup. It made little designs on the white inside, and she concentrated on them. She thought of the way it had all ended. She had become pregnant, and he had said that she must do what she wanted, but for his part he could not cope with the problem. He said he would go away for a while and when it was all over and she had solved her problem, he would be back. She solved her problem. The baby was gone, but when he returned, she’d found that her love had gone as well. Isabel remembered the last thing that he said to her: “You’ll never forget me. I changed your life, gave you the world of art, and I loved you and fucked you better than any man ever will.”

Well, he was partially right. They met once after that, in the south of France. He took her to his villa, undressed her and fucked her intermittently all through the night. It was wonderful, but more like rape than lovemaking. In the morning she bathed and dressed. Over breakfast he said he found her sexually as wonderful as ever and was happy that she was back. She said she wasn’t, she had just come for the night; and then she had left him. That was ten years ago, and this was the first time they had met since that night.

A steward came with another small pot of hot coffee; he filled their cups and left. Anthony bent forward and put a peeled lychee nut on the side of the little cup and saucer. “You always did find them sexy to eat,” he said.

He was as handsome as he had ever been. She’d once thought him the most handsome and charming man she had ever known, and so did many other women. And here he was, all these years later, still laying on the charm. Well, she could say one thing for him: If you have been had by Anthony Moressey, you have been had by the
best. He did bring one gift to the women he had: He ruined it for any other charmer. After Anthony the last thing one wanted was to be charmed ever again.

As they sat there sipping the last of the coffee, she watched him covertly. She looked everywhere but in his eyes. He was a big man, six feet two inches tall, wide in the shoulders, but not too narrow in the hips. He had a big handsome head with blond, straight, silky hair worn on the longish side, now mixed with streaks of white, that always fell over one eye and which he constantly pushed back by running his fingers through it. His eyes were of the deepest blue and his large exquisite nose was straight. The dimple on one side of his face, and his mouth and lips, still made Isabel melt. She’d always wanted to kiss that mouth, to hold and suck his lips with her own lips, to run her tongue over them. That is what she always wanted when she looked at his mouth, and that is what she wanted now.

She knew that he had been discreetly watching her all through the supper. Maybe discreetly was not quite the word. It was more like watching her with indifference.

Isabel had decided that she would like to smoke a joint of hashish before the movie. She excused herself and said she would be back in a few minutes, and not to start the movie without her. She went to Sir Alexis’s room and found the lapis lazuli box, took out a joint and lit it. There was a light tap at the door and it made her jump. She asked who it was. It was Gamal wanting to know if Isabel wanted anything. She opened the door and said she would want nothing before morning, and for him to find a chair and go to sleep. He thanked her and said goodnight, and to ring the bell if she wanted anything during the night.

Closing the door, she turned around so her back was against it and drew deeply on her cigarette. For a moment she had thought it might have been Anthony. Oh, how she wanted to get close to him! But obviously he was having none of it. It took only a few puffs on the cigarette before she felt that lovely buzz. She put it out, ran a brush through her hair, added a touch of lipstick and started back to Anthony. As she stepped through her doorway she saw him go into one of the bathrooms. There was no one in sight, and so she went to the bathroom door and knocked gently. Anthony opened it and Isabel went in. Not knowing what to say to him, she said nothing, but simply
slipped her arms around his waist, pressed against him and kissed him: on the lips, next on one cheek and then the other; she kissed one eye, the tip of his nose, then the other eye and back to his lips again. This time his lips parted and she kissed him deeply. He never touched her. She stood back and looked at him. He pulled her towards him and held her and they kissed deeply again. Then he looked at her and said, “It’s too late now, Isabel, years too late. I like boys now.”

Isabel was not surprised. There had been talk about it for as long as she had known him. Some said that he was exclusively homosexual, but, of course, she knew better, and had guessed that he was simply bisexual, but had never known the truth until years after they parted.

“Isabel, you are as lovely as ever,” he said. “There are a hundred things I would like to say to you, but it is all too late. Let’s go watch the movie before we are missed. I don’t think it would be a good idea to be caught together in here.”

Isabel knew that he was right; she also knew that everything was over except a silent bond that would never be broken, talked about or used.

“I will go first,” she said.

He touched her hair, smoothing some strands that had been out of place. “Yes, go. I will wait a few minutes.” He smiled. “I never thought you could do this to me again. You go ahead.”

Isabel made her way through the dining room and into the main cabin of the plane. She was relatively composed concerning Anthony, and was far more disturbed about her memory of the past and the role that she played in their love affair. If she was upset now about what had just happened between them, it was not with him, but with herself. Isabel did not take failure very well at the best of times. She saw this as another mistake, an act of aggression, not of love, hence a failure. Although Isabel no longer tormented herself over circumstances that she could not change, she wondered about real love for and with a man.

It had taken Isabel a long time to throw out of her life all that she had been taught about men. All the experiences that she had been through as a result of that teaching boiled down to the reality that she was capable of real love for a man. What she’d felt at the moment she saw
Anthony was not love but desire. Their sexual feelings for one another were so highly charged that it created an instinctive bond between them. Because Isabel would not recognize that this sexual attraction was a matter of surfaces, she was dishonest. Because of her own vanity she’d been completely wrong about Anthony and love.

How horrid and unjust to both of them that she should have lied to herself all those years ago and labeled that highly charged sexual feeling between them something more than passion. How much damage and hurt had been done by her, out of her desperation to find love? No longer desperate, she could wait, and if genuine love were to come to her she would recognize it, just as she could now recognize its pale imitation.

She went to the far end of the cabin, where the tournament was in progress. The stewards were standing around the backgammon table watching. Gamal was fast asleep in a chair. One of them came forward and asked Isabel if she was ready for the movie. She said as soon as Mr. Moressey returned. Just then they saw him enter the main cabin and so they went forward to meet him. The steward settled them into their chair, which was more of a love seat, actually. There were ottomans to put their feet on, and when they were both settled in, it was like a large chaise longue for two. At each side there was a table: one held a pitcher of orange juice and a siphon of soda water, the other a bucket of champagne. A cashmere blanket rested on each of the ottomans in case their feet got cold. The steward put the movie on and adjusted it, gave the remote control panel to Anthony and showed him how to work it. He then said that he would be at the other end of the cabin with the other stewards. The main lights were put out and the cabin settled down for the night. The only light came from the television screen at their end of the long cabin, and the recessed pin light which lit up the backgammon board to their rear at the other end. The sound of the powerful airplane motors droned on, as did Bogart and Bacall in
To Have and Have Not
.

The movie credits were streaming across the screen when Anthony discovered a button that released the back of the love seat they were sitting on. He adjusted it to an angle that put them in a half-reclining position; with tiny pillows for their heads and their feet stretched out before
them on the ottomans they gave their attention to the film.

An experienced traveler, Isabel had chosen a dress that buttoned down the front. Now she unbuttoned the first few at the neck and the last few at the bottom, so that she could move around easily without wrinkling her dress. She wore nothing underneath it and was completely comfortable. Reaching down she took the lap robe and draped it over her legs. She was still busy making herself comfortable when she looked up and met Anthony’s eyes. Obviously, he had been watching her.

She offered him the other lap robe. He refused it, but reached over and squeezed her hand in a friendly, if indifferent way, and became engrossed in the film.

It was a film that she had seen half a dozen times, and tonight it did not hold her interest. After fifteen minutes she became restless, turned on her side with her back towards Anthony, reached over and poured herself a glass of half orange juice and half soda water. After taking a few sips she put it down and remained in that position, looking out of the window into endless black space. She patted her pillow, tucked it into a cosy position between her head and her cheek and pulled her knees up until she was in a semifetal position. In this half-lying, half-sitting position she drifted off into that black space with her thoughts.