Young Hearts Crying (31 page)

Harmon Falls would be her first stop. She had called Paul Maitland last night to arrange this visit, and he’d tried to shy away from it by saying he’d never been a very good judge of other people’s painting, but she’d persisted. “Whoever said you’re supposed to be a ‘judge,’ Paul? I only want you to look at
these pictures and see if you like them, that’s all, because if you do it’ll mean a great, great deal to me.”

And her imagination had taken it from there. She knew she’d be able to tell at once if he liked them. If he glanced back at her face with even a slight nod or a slight smile, after looking at each picture, it would mean he thought they were good. And if he impulsively slung his arm around her, or anything like that, it would mean he thought she was a painter.

Peggy Maitland might then come and join them in a long, three-way hug of comradeship – they’d all be laughing because they’d be off balance and stepping on each other’s shoes – and on the high wave of that exhilaration it might be easy for Lucy to bring them along with her to the Nelsons’ party tonight.

“Isn’t it about time, Paul?” she would say. “Isn’t it about time you got over this senseless prejudice? The Nelsons are wonderful people, and they’d love to meet you.”

And there could then be a fine joining of three painters in Tom Nelson’s studio. The two men might be a little reserved at first – they’d shake hands firmly enough, then step back to look each other up and down – but all the tension would dissolve when Lucy put her pictures out for display.

“My God, Lucy,” Tom Nelson might say in a hushed voice. “How’d you ever learn to paint like that?”

Still, nobody had to tell her how treacherous the imagination could be. This was what Dr. Fine called “fantasizing,” as wretchedly graceless a word as most of his others, and she resolved to put it all out of her mind.

Paul was still out on some carpentry job when Lucy got to the Maitlands’ house; that was too bad, because she always knew she wouldn’t get a very gracious welcome from Peggy.

“…  I never drink until Paul gets home,” Peggy explained when they were seated uncomfortably together, “but I can offer
you a cup of coffee. And I made some raisin cookies this morning; would you like one?”

Lucy didn’t really want coffee, and the trouble with the raisin cookie was that it looked at least six inches wide. She didn’t know how she was ever going to get through it. There were only a few topics she could discuss with Peggy Maitland, and she lingered over each of them as a way of warding off silence.

Yes, her mother and stepfather were “fine.” Yes, Diana and Ralph Morin were also “fine”, though still in Philadelphia; they had two little boys now and were expecting a third child soon. “And speaking of that,” Peggy said, “I’m pregnant too. We just found out.”

Lucy told her that was wonderful; she said she was delighted; she said she was sure it would make them both very happy, and she even said she hoped it would be only the first of a good many children because she’d always imagined Paul and Peggy as ideal parents of a big family.

But while listening to herself saying all those things, holding the giant cookie just short of her lips, she was fully aware that silence would fall in the room as soon as her voice stopped.

And it did. She managed to take a bite of the cookie and to say “Oh, this is good” around her chewing, but from then on the silence was complete. Peggy asked no questions of Lucy – not even about Laura; not even about the Art Students League – and because there were no more questions there was no more talk. All they were doing now, adrift in all this silence, was waiting for Paul to come home.

I’ve never liked you, Peggy, Lucy said in her mind. You’re very pretty and I know everybody thinks you’re a treasure, but you’ve always struck me as a spoiled, selfish, rude little girl. Why haven’t you ever grown up enough to be kind, like most people?
Or even considerate? Or even courteous?

But at last there was a stamping outside the front door and Paul came into the house. “Hey,” he said as he put down his heavy toolbox. “Good to see you, Lucy.”

He looked tired – he was getting a little old for manual labor in the service of art – and he made straight for the liquor supply. That was a lucky thing for Lucy because it meant that as soon as both the Maitlands’ backs were turned she was able to open her purse and stuff the damned cookie inside it.

Paul was well into his second drink before he seemed to remember why Lucy was here. “How about those pictures?” he asked her.

“They’re out in the car.”

“Want a hand with them?”

“No; sit still, Paul,” she said. “I’ll get them. There’re only four.”

She was already steeled for disappointment when she brought them in and arranged them on the floor against the living-room wall. She was ready to regret having come to this house in the first place.

“Well, these are nice, Lucy,” Paul said after a while. “Very nice.”

Mr. Santos had a way of saying “nice” that could fill you with pride and hope, but that wasn’t how Paul Maitland used the word. And he didn’t once look back from the pictures at Lucy’s face.

“I’ve never been much of a judge, as I told you,” he said, “but I can certainly see how the League’s been good for you. You’ve learned a lot.”

It took less time to gather up and stack the paintings than it had to set them out, and she carried the four of them easily under one arm as she went to the door.

Paul got up to wish her goodnight, and that was when he
looked into her eyes for the first time, with the sorrow of an old friend’s apology for not having been able to say more.

“Come back and see us again soon, Lucy,” he said, and Peggy didn’t say anything at all.

Lucy went home just long enough to take a shower and change her clothes, because she had promised to be in Tom Nelson’s studio well in advance of the party crowd. And while she was brushing her hair a small, nice thing occurred to her before she could quite remember what it was: Charlie Rich would be thinking about her all the time.

Tom was playing the drums along with a Lester Young recording, and his face looked lost in the music, but he stopped at once and got up and turned off the record player when he saw Lucy come in.

“Now, listen, Tom,” she began. “I want you to promise me something. If you don’t like these pictures I want you to tell me so. If you can say
why
you don’t like them it might be helpful, because I might learn something, but the main thing is to let me have it straight from the shoulder. No fooling around.”

“Oh, that goes without saying,” he said. “I’ll be merciless. I’ll be brutal. Would it be okay if I tell you first, though, that you look terrific tonight?”

And she couldn’t fake much shyness when she thanked him for that, because she knew she did look good. She was wearing a new dress of the kind said to do wonders for her; her hair was exactly right, and her need to know about the paintings might well have brought a certain radiance to her face and eyes.

She placed the four pictures along the studio wall, not far from the trap drums, and Tom dropped nimbly to his haunches to examine each one. He took so long over them that she began to suspect he was stalling, using the time to figure out what he would say.

“Yeah,” he said at last, and one of his expressive hands followed a curving line in the painting she had decided she liked best. “Yeah, that’s nice, the way you did that. This whole area over here’s nice, too, and so’s this here. Then here in this other one, you got a nice design going for you. Colors are pretty, too.”

Then he stood up, and she knew that if she didn’t ask a question or two there would be no more talk at all.

“Well, Tom,” she said, “I didn’t think they’d take you by storm, exactly, but can you tell me one sort of general thing about these paintings? Do you think they’re a little on the amateur-night-in-Dixie side?”

“A little on the amateur what?”

“Well, that’s just an expression. I mean do you think they’re amateurish work?”

He backed away from her and sank both hands into the side pockets of his paratrooper’s jacket, looking irritated and compassionate at the same time.

“Aw, Lucy, come on,” he said. “What can I say? Sure they’re amateurish, dear, but that’s because you’re an amateur. You can’t expect to do professional work after a few months at the League, and nobody else can expect it of you, either.”

“It hasn’t been a few months, Tom,” she told him. “It’s been almost three years.”

“Can I peek?” Pat Nelson called from the kitchen, and she came into the studio drying her hands on a dish towel. After she’d peeked, after she’d inspected the four paintings for a conscientious length of time, she told Lucy they were very impressive.

But the first party guests would be arriving soon, so Lucy took the pictures out to the driveway where her car was parked. She placed the four of them on top of the other eight, then slammed and locked the trunk on them all – and with the finality of that
slam she knew she would never go back to the Art Students League.

For a long time she stood alone under the high, heavily whispering trees and pressed her knuckles to her lips like Blanche Dubois, but she didn’t cry. Blanche had never cried either; it was Stella who did all the “luxurious” crying. Blanche had no need to cry because she was acquainted with despair, and Lucy felt she was coming to be acquainted with it too.

But despair would have to wait at least a few more hours, because this was a party night at the Nelsons’. Chip Hartley would probably be among the guests, but she’d learned long ago not to dread that: they had often met and talked pleasantly at these parties since the end of their time together. Once or twice – three times, actually – she had even gone back to Ridgefield and slept with him. They were “friends.”

And as she walked around to the Nelsons’ kitchen door she changed her mind about the League. She would go back there, but it would only be for the purpose of seeing Charlie Rich. He might turn out to be older than he looked; and besides, however treacherous the word “friend” might be, she knew she was going to need all the friends she could get.

In the humid brightness of the kitchen she stood with one hand on her hip like a fashion model and the other calmly smoothing her hair. She was thirty-nine and didn’t know much about anything and probably never would, but she didn’t need Tom Nelson or anyone else to tell her she had never looked prettier.

“Pat?” she said. “As long as everybody knows I’m practically an alcoholic anyway, do you suppose I could fix myself a drink?”

For Michael Davenport, looking back, the time after his divorce would always fall into two historical periods: pre-Bellevue and post-Bellevue. And although the first lasted only a little more than a year, it came to seem longer than that in memory because so many things happened to him then.

It was a year of melancholy and regret – he had only to look into the infinite sadness of his daughter’s face to be reminded of that, even when she smiled, even when she laughed. Still, he soon found there could be an unexpected vigor in his days alone – a frequent quickening of the spirit, a brave and youthful readiness for anything; and it would always nourish his secret pride to know that within three weeks after leaving Tonapac he won a young and stunningly pretty girl.

“Well, sure it’s a good-enough place,” Bill Brock said, pacing around the cheap apartment Michael had found for himself on Leroy Street, in the West Village, “but you can’t just hole up here alone all the time, Mike, or you’re gonna go crazy. Look: there’s this big-assed party uptown Friday night – some advertising guy I hardly even know. He comes on like an extra-smooth gangster or something, but what the hell: almost anything might turn up at a party like that.” And Brock crouched over Michael’s desk to write down a name and address.

The door there was opened by a hearty man who said “Any friend of Bill Brock’s is a friend of mine,” and Michael ventured into a loud roomful of talking, drinking strangers who might have been picked at random off the street: they seemed to have nothing in common but their various kinds of new and expensive clothes.

“Pretty big crowd,” Bill Brock said when Michael had found him at last, “but I’m afraid there isn’t much good stuff – much available stuff, anyway. There’s an extraordinary little English girl in the other room, but you’ll never get near her. She’s surrounded.”

She was surrounded, all right: five or six men were trying to claim and hold her attention. But she was so extraordinary – all eyes and lips and cheekbones as she stood chatting in an upper-class English accent, like the prettiest girl in an English movie – that any chance of getting near her seemed worth the effort.

“…  I like your eyes,” she told him. “You have very sad eyes.”

Within five minutes she’d agreed to meet him at the front door, “as soon as I can get away from all this”; that took five minutes more; then they spent half an hour having a drink in a bar around the corner, where she told him her name was Jane Pringle, that she was twenty, that she’d come to this country five years ago when her father was “appointed to direct the American part of an enormous international corporation,” but that her parents were now divorced and she’d been “sort of at loose ends for a while.” She wanted him to know, though, that she was wholly independent: she earned her living as a secretary in a theatrical press-agent’s office, and she loved her job: “I love the people there, and they love me.”

But Michael got her out of that bar and into a cab even before she stopped talking, and then in almost no time at all she was
naked in his bed with her sweet legs locked around his own, writhing and gasping and having at last what she later declared, in tears, to be the first orgasm of her life.

Jane Pringle was almost too good to be true, and the best part was that she wanted to stay with him indefinitely – or, as she said, “until you get tired of me.” Their first days and weeks together may not quite have been the happiest in Michael’s memory – there were a few too many artificial smiles and sighs for that – but they let him know that all his senses had come alive again, in surprisingly fresh and vivid ways, and that was enough for the time being.