An Emergence of Green (21 page)

She smiled, grateful for his love. “All right, honey.”

“Some news, Princess. I’ve been trying to catch up with Dick Jensen’s performance numbers ever since the company transferred me here. I finally did it. My district won the third-quarter sales contest.”

“Paul, that’s wonderful! I’m so very proud of you.” A suspicion dawned and she asked, “Did you just get the news?”

“Last Wednesday.”

She looked away from him, guilt descending. The trouble between them, combined with her illness, had caused him to carry this triumph unshared for more than a week.

“It’s a good news–bad news kind of thing,” he said ruefully. “We get a real nice bonus—something over five thousand, I’ll get the exact number tomorrow. But it means entertaining the sales group. Think we can…get it together for a week from Saturday? Afternoon and evening, there’ll be wives and kids—”

“Honey, I see no problem.” She squeezed his hand, her mind gratefully at work on the logistics of a party for twenty or so. “Let me see about our dinner.” She started to get up.

He took her by the shoulders and gently settled her back into the lawn chair. “Woman, leave it to me, tomorrow night’s dinner, too. I’m getting good at this. I’ll put the chicken in the oven till we’re ready to eat. You stay out here where it’s nice. The sun is good for you.”

He went back through the glass door and she turned her thoughts again to the party. They would barbecue, of course…vegetable trays and cold pastas. She would buy some of that already made up. With any luck it would still be warm enough and the children could play in the pool and not be underfoot. Saturday would be the end of October, she reflected; people here were actually swimming outdoors in October…How very different it was to live in California.

Memories of Paul came to her, of when they had first moved to this city. He had been like an endearing country bumpkin the way he had gaped at the more outlandish citizens and the city’s unique landscape. He had been a little boy who held her hand and laughed in wonder and enchantment as they explored Disneyland together; he gawked like a ten-year-old at the sound stages and back lots of Universal Studios, the fairy-tale estates of Beverly Hills and Bel Air. But when she had coaxed him into further exploration of the city, into Chinatown and Griffith Park and the beach cities, he had become increasingly reluctant, wanting to retreat behind the walls of their new house, just as he had in the last two cities where they had lived.

A lonely, wistful little prince, she thought tenderly. Needing only his castle and trusting only his Princess…
No one knew as she did how his cool demeanor and graying hair disguised a solitary and needy little boy. She did love him. How could she not love him? she asked herself as he came into the yard with a tall, frosted drink for her.

“Orange juice,” he told her. “Lots of vitamins. Just a tiny bit of vodka—that’s good for you too.” He touched her drink with his martini glass: “To your perfect health.”

She said slowly, “I thought…I’d come back to our bedroom tonight.”

As his eyes widened in happiness she glanced away, out over the pool where she had first found Val Hunter four months ago, to the fence Val Hunter had leaped over to come into her life.

Yes I love him,
she thought,
but I can’t have him touch me yet. Not yet.

She said, “But that’s all. I’m not a hundred percent about everything, about us. But I’d like to be back in our bedroom again if that’s okay.”

“It’s okay.” He started to say something else, and paused; then he said simply, “I’m glad.”

Carolyn had moved her clothes into their bedroom and then gone to bed. He sat with a magazine in his lap, watching television unseeingly, forcing himself to wait until his usual hour for bed.

Freshly showered and shaved, he slipped into bed beside her, uncertain whether she was asleep and not really caring. Moving close enough to feel her warmth but careful not to touch her, he lay awake for some time; and he awakened frequently during the night, the perfume of her presence washing over him. They had been apart eighteen days.

The next day he sent roses to the house and made reservations at a restaurant they had gone to months ago, its decor too fussy for his taste but one she had pronounced charming. He brought home a bottle of champagne. “What is all this?” Carolyn asked, smiling and shaking her head, “Christmas?”

He stripped the wire fastening and foil from the champagne bottle and worked at the cork with his thumbs. “Feel well enough to go out tomorrow for just a couple of hours? To some of those fancy stores in Beverly Hills?”

“Sure. But not to buy anything. It’s ridiculous to pay a fortune when—”

“Indulge me. The bonus is just short of six thousand—more than I expected.” He poured the foaming gold liquid, handed her a glass, and lifted his own in a toast: “Princess, let’s celebrate—let’s go spend money!”

Saturday they walked the crowded streets of Beverly Hills hand in hand, looking in shop windows, chuckling at mannequins costumed in army fatigues and wrinkled cotton. “Get rich so you can look elegantly poor,” Carolyn joked. She refused his urging to go into the Rodeo Drive shops but she did go into Neiman Marcus.

Happily reminding himself of the bonus money, he talked her into trying on the well-cut gabardine pants and green silk shirts she was admiring. Stroking the fabrics as if hypnotized, she surrendered to his insistent coaxing and chose two pairs of pants, a skirt, two silk shirts. The saleswoman disinterestedly charged seven hundred and forty-six dollars to his American Express card.

As he carried the packages out to the car he thought exuberantly that he wasn’t through yet. He’d get them out of that house in the Valley next. Maybe buy a place in the South Bay. And only a month or so to go on Carolyn’s new job—he’d make damn sure that company of hers kept its promise about changing her hours back. Now that his marriage was returning to normal, now that that damned woman seemed to have lost her grip on Carolyn—he wouldn’t make the mistake of banking on it but it sure looked that way—he wanted Carolyn as far removed from her as he could possibly manage.

Val was snatched from her desultory reading of the paper by Carolyn’s name. Neal had asked, “Do you think Carolyn’s getting better by now?” He was sitting beside her on the sofa.

“I hope so,” she answered, sliding an arm around his shoulders.

Monday Night Football ended to staccato shouts by the announcer and statistics across the screen. “Homework time,” Val said, squeezing his shoulders again. “What’ve you got?”

“Math.”

“Ugh. Be a good kid and do it out of my sight.”

Neal obediently went off to his room, and as she had for days, she went to bed early. Sleeping meant the absence of thought, and she ached with the misery of her thoughts. Amid the desolation of all the recent days, this day had contained a bleakness all its own: the phone call from Carolyn.

“I want you to know,” Carolyn had said slowly, “that I’m fine…but I need time. I need to get myself back together. To sort things out.”

She could visualize Carolyn; she had seen her speak on the phone several times with that unconscious habit of clasping a hand to her throat as if to physically control the tone of her voice. Val answered carefully, “I understand. I should tell Neal something. He asks, he—”

“Say I’ve gone away to recuperate for a while. It’s the truth, anyway.”

“Will you let me say one thing?”

“Right now I just—”

“One thing, that’s all. The last time we were together I was…I damaged whatever we—”

“Please, Val.”

Her body weakened at the soft sound of her name, with memory of the beach house, of Carolyn breathing that name. “Carrie—”

“Please don’t. I can’t talk anymore.” And she had hung up.

She could never have imagined this need—that Carolyn’s absence would bring her to the desperation of repeated phone calls, even laying siege to Carolyn’s house. That she would so totally abandon pride. And now it was over. Carolyn was gone. There was no one to whom she could voice her anguish, except perhaps Alix, who had returned from Houston four days ago—surprisingly, still with her Helen. She had spent a long evening with Alix, had spoken of Carolyn—how could she not, when Neal would talk about little else? But she had not revealed herself. Why submit to further mortification, debase herself by confessing to Alix how stupidly she had lost Carolyn?

That she was totally responsible was beyond challenge. The accumulated humiliation of a lifetime had driven her into a heedless resolve to somehow trample Paul Blake; instead she. had damaged the tender shoots of the love Carolyn had offered her, and her own emergent new self.

She must end this paralysis, somehow function again. Her work? Yes, that was always there. She could not and would not stop working; financial necessity as well as ingrained professional habit dictated that she work daily at her craft. But the usual controlled excitement of applying paint to canvas had paled into effortful drudgery.

What about Susan’s suggestion that she conduct evening classes at the gallery? She had refused then; an art class was a minimal source of income at best, not worth the time involved; and her approach to art was probably too iconoclastic and personally focused. But the assertiveness in her work that Susan had spoken of as a frequently missing ingredient in women’s art—perhaps that could somehow be communicated to novice painters. She could explore Susan’s ideas further, at least…She might even come into contact citing new talent…other women…Tomorrow she would call her father, go see him. Take Alix with her. Dad had always liked Alix. Renew acquaintance with artists and art-loving friends scarcely seen since she had moved into the Robinson’s guest house. Jacques, Monica, David…She smiled, thinking of how the Robinsons would have viewed with slack-jawed amazement her artist friends, especially Monica with her graveyard makeup. Yes, she had been neglecting her friends and that whole aspect of her life for months. Ever since Carolyn.

Why not a party? As soon as possible? This Saturday, she decided. Planning a party and contacting old friends might help distract her from this pain. Oh God, this pain…

On Friday afternoon after work, the day before the party for Paul’s office staff, Carolyn drove to Venice, to the Austin Art Gallery. Located three blocks from the ocean amid a cheerful clutter of small antique shops and specialty stores, the gallery appeared from its front room to be a labyrinth of smaller back rooms. With a sense of obligatory propriety, Carolyn paused to inspect a series of pleasant if bland seascapes.

A trim, dark-haired woman ventured partway into the room. “Let me know if I can answer any questions.”

Carolyn looked at her curiously. The textured white wool skirt and sweater looked expensive. Could this be the Susan whose parents owned the beach house? “Thank you,” she said, “I’d like to stroll around.”

“Stay the afternoon.” The woman’s smile was easy and attractive. “You’ll find coffee in the back room.”

With decorous slowness, in mounting anticipation, Carolyn moved through a room of cheerful geometric mobiles, then through impressionistic landscapes, glossy acrylic miniatures, paper collages, huge watercolor flowers. She knew she had found Val’s work before she saw HUNTER in firm upright strokes in the lower corner of the first painting.

Five oversize paintings, the only contents of a room lighted by angled fluorescent ceiling fixtures, seemed to reflect their own light. She stopped before a canvas of glowing viridian, its dust-colored background shot through with what she judged to be cobalt yellow. In a seemingly haphazard fusion of tropical foliage she identified palm fronds. Other leafy shapes tugged at her mind in vague familiarity. An inked card beside the painting stated:

GREENERY, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

V. Hunter, Los Angeles, California

She studied the painting for a long time, held by the hot vital greens, the fluid rendering of leaves and plants she had seen every day along the streets and freeways of Los Angeles without really seeing.

The next canvas poured warm cadmium oranges and yellows over her. Suggestive of the composition of her own rain painting, vaguely symmetrical shapes of burnt sienna conveyed building tops at the horizon level. The card read:  SUMMER SUNRISE, LOS ANGELES.

Reluctant to leave the incandescence of this painting, eventually she turned her gaze to two large canvases which presented different perspectives of the same subject: an angular, cerulean blue body of water tightly surrounded by dusty hills whose sparse cover was dry, brittle, dying. The controlled shape of the body of water was somehow comforting, its strong blue color tranquil and clear—cool reassurance amid the encroaching desolation of the arid hills. The card beside each painting was identical: RESERVOIR AT CASTAIC: SEPTEMBER.

“I see you’ve found an artist you like.”

So immersed in the paintings she had forgotten where she was, Carolyn whirled at the sound of the voice.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” the woman apologized softly. “I noticed you’d been in here awhile so I thought I’d mention that this artist is selling quite steadily. She’s an exceptional talent.”

The woman stepped to a painting Carolyn had not looked at yet—a scarlet vase, the flowers it contained suggested by splashes of color so brilliant they seemed to move, to dance. “Her work is distinctive, very bold. And her use of color—look how she’s put light colors against a dark background, very difficult to do well. Incredible use of color.”