Bereavements (19 page)

“Well . . .” He settled back in his chair. “First—where. The Vincenti Gallery, on Park Row.”

Mrs. Evans laughed. “I own it.”

Martin: “I know.”

“—Though I haven’t thought about it in years. Heavens knows who manages it now, or what they’re selling. I’ll have to inquire. I remember, there was a fire, and things got very upset. Two Picassos were burnt, at least smoke damaged, and a Matisse. The insurance company—But nevermind that. October. Yes. I remember, because we exhibited one of Jamie’s paintings—for the fun of it!—sandwiched between Picasso and Matisse! That one there—” pointing to an opposite wall “the very one: the snow scene. More snow than scene you’ll notice, to hide the shortcomings of the artist!” She laughed again. “However, you’ll agree that the signature—his initials, are blindingly legible and bold:
Jde VR
—de Vinaz Rojas. He liked his father’s name.”

Her eyes, briefly on the painting, now returned to Martin. It seemed impossible to tell this odd young man anything about herself he didn’t already know, but she felt inclined to mention, before he spoke again: “Evans is my maiden name. Having survived three husbands, I thought I’d give precedence its due and again use it last. My full name . . .” she paused, “I don’t know why it pleases me—I suppose because it sounds so absurd—is Carma de Vinaz Rojas Vincenti Harrison-Smith Evans!”

She smiled her most radiant.

“But about Jamie . . . ?”

It was a large Kandinsky (Martin said), “I believe one of his women—all streaked red and black, blue, yellow, green. Thickly painted, smeared; you know how he is, or was . . . ”

Mrs. Evans waited.

“Well, Jamie and I stood looking at it; he amused and perplexed, wandering back and forth, touching a blob of paint, actually straightening the frame on the wall, quite as if he owned the gallery, which, in a way, though I didn’t know it immediately, he obviously did . . .”

Waited.

“I had no idea who he was until after I’d left—some precocious youngster hung up on painting, but then I remembered a photo of you and him, just the previous day in a newspaper, attending . . . some society bash or other. So, of course, I made the connection: Vincenti, and his straightening the painting with such an air of—possession.”

“You said you spoke. He spoke.”

“Yes, but—it was just a small joke between us. He simply . . . simply asked me how I liked it: the Kandinsky, and I . . . I said that I hated it; which I did.”

“No no. You’re describing, not saying his words. Tell me again. I want to know them, exactly;
his
words, their inflexion, his manner.”

“Well . . . ”

Martin blinked, swallowed, and seized the opportunity. He rose, pushed back his chair, became the perfect mime he could be, the superb actor, creating the gallery, the painting, Jamie, himself.

“‘How do you like it?—do you like the Kandinsky?’ That’s what he said, not with a smile, but a grin; he was a boy who grinned, the left side of his mouth going up a little higher than the other.
I
said—‘I hate it.’ And I did. To which
he
replied: ‘How do you know? Are you sure? Because, just before you came in, I hung it up-side-down.’”

She had no clear idea of why she agreed to see him again. In retrospect, their mutual desire seemed tagged to something cheap and sensational.

The games they finally played were games of desperate people, those who are weary, bored, cornered, feeling cheated by life; shallow, meaningless Pinteresque pauses and glances creating mystery where none existed at all, “smart” show-off repartee and barbed epigrams tossed relentlessly in a sea of incipient sadomasochism.

But how could she think or consider things rationally at all? He had exhausted her, leaving her weak and without defenses, his persuasiveness overpowering—a salesman so extraordinary one couldn’t possibly resist. Whatever he was selling, and exactly what got confused after a while—“I’ll buy it!” she thought; “anything, as long as he leaves now and lets me rest.”

The confusion—the “what” of what he was selling lay in the greedy multiplicity of roles he wanted to play: primarily and absurdly her “son” of course, whatever that could mean under the circumstances to a man his age and a woman hers. But also, although he was circumspect and carefully euphemistic, a kind of
carte blanche
“friend” and “escort”—surely (though he might pretend otherwise) none other than the Paulo, Raphael and Mario he had named, albeit he had superlative credentials: youth, grace, wit, charm, good manners (when he desired) and exceedingly fine looks.

He also had an aura of health and frequent heterosexual need about him, in no way suggesting—as the ridiculous “Maestro” used to say of so many actors—that he’d been “touched” by the “Faery Queen.” Indeed, “I adore you,” the young man had said, “as I am committed to adore
all
women”—and it was probably true, but notice!—
all women of beauty, wealth, power, position, family, talent
—these being the stimulant for him, the essential erotic elements.

“True, I’m not a
boy,”
he had the grace to admit as he laid the foundation, then structured his impressive logic. “—That is, the boy of your memory and imagination, but a son is a son” (like a weary rose is a rose?) “whatever his age. In ten years, fifteen, Jamie would have been
my
age, and then what?”

He waited and was encouraged by her silence. He didn’t know that he had already succeeded; that she was ready not only to buy the vacuum but all its attachments, including the genuine, all-leather carrying case that housed the whole shebang.

“Would that,” Paulo-Raphael-Mario asked, referring to the twenty-odd-year-old Jamie he had just conjured up, “make him any
less
a son? Carma!” (astonishingly he was calling her that barely two hours after they’d met); “no—he would be more, more of a son—many years more.”

And no need to send his love . . . ?

Many kisses . . . ?

She also had the feeling, vague as it was, that Mr. Dzierlatka was applying for a job as her social secretary in order to arrange schedules and events, make sure she
did
the right things, rubbed (bruised) elbows with the people who mattered.

“Don’t you realize how much you need to get out?” asked Paulo with a devastating smile. “How long has it been—come now—since you’ve seen an opera or a ballet?”

“And what about concerts,” Raphael inquired, he being extremely fond of music, particularly classical and jazz.

“The supper clubs are fun,” interposed Mario, who loved good food, especially French and Italian, though he was a calorie counter and kept an unwavering eye on the twenty-nine inches that measured his waist.

“What about films?! There’s a Festival at Lincoln Center. And the theater! Think how many good shows there are in town!

“‘Getting out,’” Dr. Dzierlatka concluded, ready with a tongue depressor after feeling her pulse, “is the best prescription in the world for grief; real therapy.”

So? What did she say? How about it? Was it a deal? Were they
en rapport
in their thinking? Could they consider their liaison a
fait accompli?

“Well . . . ”

She hesitated. “Let’s . . . let’s just say, for now—
entente cordiale.
Call me. We’ll see.”

The time had come for Mrs. Evans to acquire her monthly allotment of prescriptions. She needed valium, and would probably ask for librium, too, since there were subtle variations in her emotional reactions to drugs, and alternating one chemical with another seemed to increase the benefits of both.

She also wanted just two or three of those dark, evil green monsters, Placidyl 750, for use on those few occasions when her bouts with depression, panic, despair and grief became intolerable, so severe it was necessary to plunge into unconsciousness as quickly as possible.

Most important, the chloral hydrate, her nightly “sleeping draught,” was in short supply, virtually depleted, the last half inch of it beginning to form pink crystals at the bottom of the bottle, quite like the sticks of glittering rock candy she made as a child.

Her treasured assortment of seconal and nembutal remained intact, though she had nestled them together finally, in an old wide-mouthed perfume bottle with a tear-shaped stopper. In a moment of morbid humor, she had pasted a label on the outside inscribed with the words “Last Exit,” meticulously copying Old English script from the alphabet in her dictionary.

But about her prescriptions . . .

She couldn’t ask Dori or Rose to pick them up. Her sweet, sneaky friend and ex-(brief)lover, Dr. Robert Algood Jones would never permit it. Intent on extracting his blackmail first, he’d arrange his busy schedule to suit her, and then insist on seeing and talking to her face to face. So—she was required monthly to report on “how she
felt,”
“what she was
up to,”
and “how things
were.”
Confessedly, he found these commonplace idioms and others of their kind, valuable and comforting euphemisms for the usual psychiatric jargon, which most patients found esoteric, at least clinical and de-humanizing. He also invariably asked, “what’s
new?”
and “how do things
look?”
If the latter seemed ambiguous, it was not. It was the one question referring to the future and therefore suicide. It simply meant: are you still thinking (foolish woman!) about killing yourself?

During this visit, she managed rather quickly to satisfy his concern and curiosity on all counts except the “what’s new” and “what have you been up to?”

Clearly, Angel, Bruno and Martin were new and she might soon be up to (her neck? ears? in) relationships with all of them; at least two. With sweet, disarming Bruno she could only be “up to” her hip bone, or at the very most, her waist.

The small, private joke was shameful but irresistible, and truly quite good-natured and humorously loving, but when Robert asked why she was smiling, she couldn’t confess, and answered with a lie.

She lied a good deal that day—at least colored the truth but in areas that didn’t matter. Certainly it was impossible to tell him about her ad in the
Voice.

Well then,
where
had she found Martin? At a matinee. A friend had taken her backstage and he was there, among others, congratulating the actors.