All Things Cease to Appear (11 page)

On George’s small fellowship, the apartment was barely affordable. They had few possessions: the wingchair they’d found at an estate sale, prickly with horsehair, its spent legs splayed like a drunk’s; the Persian rug that had belonged to his parents; the camelback sofa from her distant aunt, covered in faded celadon damask, that served to accommodate the rare visitor, usually her sister, Agnes, who’d stay a few days until the crowded apartment drove her crazy. The building had no elevator. She’d drag the stroller up five flights, holding her daughter’s little hand, and it could take half an hour to get upstairs. Finally, she’d twist open the locks and enter their cluttered, diminutive haven, every scrap of its splintery floors devoted to some indispensable child-rearing apparatus. Their bedroom was the size of a sandbox, the lumpy double bed jammed between the walls. Frances, who was three, slept in the alcove, the foot of her little bed piled with coats, hats and mittens that wouldn’t fit in the closet. The apartment’s only redeeming feature was the view, which reminded her almost exactly of George Bellows’s
Winter Afternoon,
the heartless blue of the river, the rusty milkweed on its banks, the white snow and banners of shadow, the ordinary mystery of a woman bundled up against the cold in a red coat. The river made her pensive and a little melancholy, and as she gazed through the dirty windows she would try to remember her original self—the girl she’d been before she met George and they’d married to save themselves, his name like a stranger’s dress you slip on and walk around in, before she’d become Mrs. George Clare, like her rapacious, chain-smoking mother-in-law. Before she’d assumed her alias as devoted wife and mother. Before she’d left Cathy Margaret behind—that heron-boned, spider-legged, ponytailed girl, now abandoned for more important tasks, like changing diapers, ironing shirts, cleaning the oven. Not that she was complaining or even unhappy; for all intents and purposes she was content. But she sensed there must be something more to life, some deeper reason for being, some dramatic purpose, if only she could find out what it was.

—

LIKE MANY UNSUSPECTING COUPLES,
they’d met in college. She was a sophomore; George was graduating that May. With mannered indifference, they’d pass each other on the sidewalks of Williamstown, she in her bulky Irish sweaters and hand-me-down kilts, he in his ratty tweed blazer, smoking Camels. He lived in the mustard Victorian on Hoxsey Street, with a group of art-history majors who had already cultivated a stuffy, curatorial arrogance that, with just a glance, reduced her to the chubby girl from Grafton with gravel dust in her shoes. Unlike George and his tony friends, Catherine was here on a scholarship; her father managed a quarry just across the border. She lived in the dorms, in a suite with three monastic biology majors. This was 1972, she was nineteen years old, and in those days, the unspoken hierarchy in the Art History Department ensured that the few female students were decidedly underappreciated.

Their first conversation occurred at a lecture on the great sixteenth-century painter Caravaggio. It had rained that morning and she was late, the auditorium a sea of brightly colored rain jackets. An empty seat caught her eye in the middle of a row. Apologizing, making people stand, she shuffled down to it, discovering that it was George in the seat beside her.

You should thank me, he said. I’ve been saving it for you.

It’s the only one left.

I think we both know why you sat here. He smiled like he knew her. George Clare, he said, reaching for her hand.

Catherine—Cathy Sloan.

Catherine. His hand was sweaty. In just a few seconds an intimacy seemed to infect them like some contagious disease. They talked briefly about mutual classes and professors. He had a very slight French accent and said he’d lived in Paris as a young boy. An apartment like
Floor Scrapers.
Do you know Caillebotte?

She didn’t.

We moved to Connecticut when I was five, and my life hasn’t been the same since. He smiled, making a joke, but she could tell he was serious.

I’ve never been to Paris.

Are you in Hager’s class?

Next semester.

He gestured at the screen, where the artist’s name was spelled out in crimson letters. You know about him, right?

Caravaggio? A little.

One of the most incredible painters in history. He’d hire prostitutes for his models and transform saucy street tarts into rosy-cheeked virgins. There’s a certain poignant justice in that, don’t you think? Even the Madonna had a cleavage.

Up close, he smelled of tobacco and something else, some musky cologne. In the close room, the high windows fogged with condensation, she had begun to sweat under her wool sweater. He was gazing at her as one gazes at a canvas, she thought, perhaps trying to solve her riddles. Like most Williams boys, he was wearing an oxford shirt and khaki trousers, but there were stylistic anomalies—rawhide bracelets around his wrist, the black canvas slippers (from Chinatown, he later told her), the rain-splattered beret on his lap.

Didn’t he kill someone? Over something stupid, right?

A game of tennis. Apparently a very bad loser. Do you play?

Tennis?

We could play some time.

I’m not very good—

Then you won’t have to worry.

About what?

That I’ll kill you if I lose. He grinned sharply. That was a joke.

I know. She tried to smile. Ha, ha.

I have some friends—we could play doubles. I’d much rather be your partner than your opponent.

I’d be a lot safer that way.

True. But playing it safe can be rather dull, don’t you think?

The overhead lights began to dim and George lowered his voice to a whisper: He got away with it, actually. I guess it’s not all that surprising when you consider what a genius he was.

Genius or not, nobody should get away with murder.

You’d be amazed what people get away with.

What do you mean?

We
all
do it. It’s like a little bonus, a cheesy door prize for all your good behavior. The book you borrow and never return, the tip you never gave. A friend’s shirt you forgot to give back. Getting away with something—it’s a rush. Come on, you can tell me. I know you’ve done it. Admit it.

I can’t think of anything.

Well, you’re more innocent than I thought. I can see you are a Very Good Girl—he enunciated each word as if it were capitalized. I recommend a swift and thorough corrupting.

A little embarrassed, she asked, What about you?

Me? Oh, I’m as corrupted as they come.

I don’t believe you. You don’t look it.

I’ve learned to blend in. It’s a survival skill. I’m like one of those pickpockets in Venice. Before you know it, you’ve got nothing left—no money, no papers, no identity.

Sounds dangerous. I’m not sure I should be talking to you.

Just wanted you to know what you’re getting into, he said.

Are you planning to pick my pocket?

I might try to get away with something.

Such as?

The audience erupted with applause as the speaker, a gaunt, white-haired gentleman in a herringbone suit, walked onto the stage.

George put his mouth up against her ear. Such as this, he said, sliding his hand under her skirt as the master’s
Triumphant Eros
filled the screen.

—

FOR REASONS
she didn’t entirely understand—for they were opposites, it seemed, with very different priorities—they became inseparable. She was a virgin, he exalted in his reputation as a ladies’ man. If she knew his true nature, then she ignored it, misinterpreted his self-absorption as intellect, his vanity as good breeding. He would ride her around on his handlebars, taking her to the coffeehouse on Spring Street or the Purple Pub or sometimes the VFW where the whiskey was only sixty cents a glass and they’d drink too much of it and talk about dead painters. George knew more about painters than anyone she’d ever met. He said he’d wanted to be an artist but his parents had talked him out of it. My father’s the furniture king of Connecticut, he told her. They’re hardly sentimental about the arts.

They’d wander around the Clark, kissing in the elegant, unmonitored rooms, the walls painted austere Berkshires colors: pewter, leek-white, goldenrod. Side by side they’d gaze dreamily at Corot or Boudin or Monet or Pissarro, her head on his shoulder, taking in his reedy tobacco scent. They’d visit the speedway in West Lebanon, sitting high in the stands in the blinding sun, counting the screaming revolutions of the cars, the metal bleachers vibrating under their legs, the smell of gasoline rising off the tarmac. They walked through woods and grassy meadows, making whistles out of fat strands of grass, kissing under the lazy muzzles of cows.

Though not especially handsome, he reminded her of someone Modigliani might’ve painted, angular and grim, with thinning hair and rosebud lips and tobacco-stained teeth. His wry intelligence was at once pretentious and intimidating, but he made her feel beautiful, like she was somebody else, somebody better. For a few heady weeks she lost herself in the dream of love. In her mind, he was a version of Jean-Paul Belmondo in
Breathless,
a movie they’d seen together, and she was Jean Seberg in her striped sailor shirts, wistful and fresh and in love. George somehow brought fantasy and spectacle to the world, allowing her to forget the split-level house in Grafton, the tartan walls of her bedroom, the green shag carpet.

They made love for the first time in a motel in Lanesborough with tiny white cottages scattered on a hill. Theirs had a little porch where they sat for a while, drinking bottles of root beer from the machine, and he talked about Mark Rothko, one of those rare painters, he said, who made you feel something that wasn’t always so good, something like the truth. She took his hand but he shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, and then they went in and took off their clothes.

Congratulations, he said afterward, lighting their cigarettes. You’ve been officially indoctrinated into a life of sin and debauchery. He kissed her unhurriedly. I hope it was worth it.

It was, she told him.

But she honestly didn’t know. She didn’t know much about sex. In high school, there’d been fits of clumsy groping in damp basements; she’d had a few serious make-out sessions with a boy from her English class, but he’d dropped her for another girl. And then she’d met George. Unlike the drawn-out seduction in movies, her deflowering had lasted less than ten minutes. There were no operatic cries of ecstasy, or anything close to the tormented lovers in
Splendor in the Grass.
When she was twelve or so, her mother let her stay up late one night to watch it, and she’d been smitten by Warren Beatty and cried herself to sleep because his romance hadn’t worked out and poor Natalie Wood, who’d been so very good, had to go to an asylum, while the love of her life married somebody else, even though everybody knew they belonged together. She wasn’t all that sure she belonged with George.

Then why do you look so guilty?

The nuns were very thorough.

You’re a big girl now, Catherine, he said. There’s more to life than doing what you’re told.

The comment made her feel stupid. It made her resent how she’d been raised, her faith. She sat up, holding the sheet over her breasts, and put out the cigarette. I don’t even smoke, she said.

He only glanced at her.

She watched him a minute, his cold, brown eyes. We’re very different, she said finally.

He nodded. Yes, we are.

Do you even believe in God?

No. Why should I?

She couldn’t seem to answer.

Why does it matter so much, anyway?

It just does.

You didn’t choose to believe in God. It’s something you’ve been told to do, like putting a napkin on your lap. You’re just falling in line.

I don’t have to defend myself, she said. I’m not exactly in the minority.

That’s for sure, he said arrogantly.

He stood up and pulled on his shirt. When she looked at him now in the dreary room, he seemed anonymous, she thought. He could be anyone. What
do
you believe in, then?

Not a whole lot, he answered. Sorry to disappoint you. He pulled on his jacket. I’ll wait outside.

Through the sheer curtain she could see him standing on the porch under the small yellow light, smoking. She stood at the mirror and brushed her hair. She didn’t really look any different. In her mind, she reviewed the momentous event: how he’d touched her, held her firmly in place and entered her as she’d lain there, open to him, searching his face. He wasn’t looking at her, she recalled, but at the greasy headboard as it knocked against the wall.

2

IN THE FALL,
they went their separate ways. He was in graduate school now; he claimed he barely had time for meals. He’d call every Sunday, but she suspected he was dating other girls. She put him out of her mind and focused on her studies and, after Williams, enrolled in a master’s program at SUNY Buffalo, to study conservation. She moved into a house with four other students and took a part-time job at a bakery. She had nearly forgotten about George Clare when, out of the blue, he called her. He’d gotten her number from her mother, he told her. He sounded different, she thought, older. He invited her down to the city and, on a rare and uncharacteristic impulse, she decided to make the trip.

They met at a small café uptown where he bought her lunch. You’ve been on my mind, he told her, taking her hand. They spent the afternoon on a blanket in the park, kissing under the trees. He talked about his work, the thesis he planned to write, his ambition to be a scholar, to teach.

They started seeing each other again. Once a month, they’d meet halfway at a cheap motel in Binghamton and make love till the windows fogged, obscuring the world outside. Lying naked under the stiff Cloroxed sheets, smoking, staring at the stains on the ceiling, they’d dissect their unpromising future together: he came from money, she was working-class; he rejected religion, she was devout; he had no interest in marriage, she wanted a husband and kids and the white picket fence.