Dive From Clausen's Pier (37 page)

Kilroy said he had another part of the museum in mind for the last two, and we made our way to a room full of what I recognized as Matisses.

“Now these you like,” he said, and when I turned to look at him he was grinning.

“Yeah, don’t you?”

“Pick one.”

I scanned the room before settling on what seemed to be a view through a window, but from deep enough inside that the window itself
was part of the picture. Outside was a little harbor with boats, a couple of houses, nothing really earth-shattering or important but the longer I looked the more I simply liked the picture until I found that I loved it—for the colors, the way the edge of the curtain reminded you of the room, the jaunty scene below, but mostly for the pleasure with which I was certain it had been made.

“I love this.”

Kilroy smiled. “It’s delicious.”

“Why do I have the feeling that’s the kiss of death?”

“Not at all—who could not like it? But come when you’re done,” he added, “and I’ll show you another,” and he moved into the center of the room to wait for me, as if delicious or not there was nothing more in this particular picture for him to see.

I knew he was saving his favorite for last, and when I saw it I had a sinking recognition that I was going to have to choose between disappointing him and lying.

“OK,” he said, “now you know who this is, right?”

“Picasso?”

“There you go. This is my favorite painting in the whole world. If I could paint like this I could go to my urn completely happy.”

I looked at him, surprised. “Do you paint?”

He shook his head.

I hesitated. “Did you?”

He grimaced. “No, Carrie, I didn’t paint. I didn’t write, I didn’t compose music—I didn’t play the piano or take acting classes or do photography.”

“So much you didn’t do,” I said.

“It hasn’t been easy.”

We stared at each other in the warm room, people moving around us. I felt moisture gather on my upper lip. “You read everything you could about World War Two,” I said after a while.

“That’s true,” he said. “That I did.”

A couple came into the room then, and I watched while the woman bent over to say something to the toddler they were pushing in a spiffy little navy blue stroller. Like his parents he was dressed all in black, with cunning little red-and-black shoes and a black leather baseball hat on his curly head. A tiny black leather jacket was draped over the stroller handle.

“Now that’s a stylin’ baby,” Kilroy said.

I looked over, and his face wore a faint sneer. “What do you mean?”

“Poor kid doesn’t stand a chance. They should be arrested for dressing him like that.”

“He looks cute.”

Kilroy shook his head with disgust. He seemed about to go on in the same vein, but then something shut off and all he said was “Oh, well, it’s MOMA on a Saturday, what do you expect?”

He looked at the Picasso again, but I felt distracted, unable to concentrate. What was going on? Something was at stake, but I didn’t know what.

“What’d you mean before,” I said, “about going to your urn?”

It wasn’t quite the question I’d intended, but before I could amend it he turned to me with a smile and said, “It was a figure of speech—when I die I want to be cremated. Don’t you?”

“I haven’t really given it much thought.”

“Must be the age difference,” he said with a grin.

I gave him a look. “Do you also know where you want your ashes scattered?”

He thought for a moment. “Maybe on a hillside in France.” He nodded. “Yeah, on this hillside in the Var, about half an hour inland from Cannes. The place where I figured out the meaning of life.”

“Which is?”

“That it’s meaningless, of course. That you can spend your life doing anything you want and in the end it won’t matter at all.” His tone was light but he was flushed suddenly, and I reached for his arm, then drew my hand back when he didn’t look at me.

“So, anyway,” he said, “my feeling in response is: look at this picture. Find a picture and just look at it.”

I did as he said. I faced the picture and really looked at it, a small, dark portrait of a human face, refracted through a terrifying prism and recomposed with no regard for nature or happiness. Cubism. I found the word inadequate to describe what was going on in the picture, how ominous I found it.

“It’s hard to look at,” I said, and he nodded.

“Of course. That’s what makes it so brilliant. You can look at Matisse all day and not have to think about anything.”

I smiled.

“That’s nothing against Matisse or you, but don’t you see how much more significant this is? How much tougher, how hard? Just wait till Paris—we’ll go to the Picasso Museum and it’ll all fall into place for you.”

“Or it won’t,” I said.

He shook his head impatiently. “Of course it will, it just takes a while. It
is
hard to look at—but it’s also hard-edged, tough, uncompromising.” He paused. “Haven’t I ever given you my lecture on soft and hard art before?”

I shook my head.

“Well, then.” He adopted a mock-scholarly tone and said, “All art, whether painting, poetry, music, dance, or anything else, can be divided into two groups, hard and soft, and as pleasing as the soft is, the hard is always superior—it might as well be a rule of nature.” He paused for a moment, and when he started talking again he’d dropped the posing tone and was speaking faster. “Matisse and Picasso are just two of the most obvious examples. Think about Renoir: totally soft. Monet, Sisley—you could eat them with a spoon. Whereas Vermeer, who puts them to shame, has that incredible rigor. It’s the same with music, with sculpture—I happen to love Beethoven, but he’s romantic, he’s soft, and for excruciating perfection you just can’t beat Bach, because he’s got that
hard edge
.”

He stared at me with his eyes bright, and there was something in him I’d never seen before, maybe delight. Then all at once it disappeared. He barked out a strange laugh. “God,” he snickered. “I’m sorry. Jesus.”

“What?”

“Nothing. You just reminded me of someone else. Or of myself with someone else.”

My heart pounded. Now that this moment was upon us, I was intensely nervous. “Who?” I asked tremulously. I was sure his answer would open up an encyclopedia of jealousies, because of course he meant a woman. “Who?” I said again, thinking this time, this time he had to answer.

But: “No one,” he said. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter,” and I sighed and turned away, not angry so much as embarrassed. And sad.

“Shall we go now?” he said, and I turned back to find him smiling awkwardly. “It’s been an hour,” he went on. “Much longer and we’ll develop museum foot.”

I followed him to the escalator and down to the exit, thinking about the little speech he’d just given—hard art, soft art. It was almost as if I’d witnessed a mystical phenomenon, like someone speaking in tongues. He’d hopped from idea to idea as if he’d been impelled.
You just reminded me of someone else. Or of myself with someone else
.

Outside, the afternoon had grown colder. He buttoned his coat with an absent expression on his face, and as I watched him, the city street fell away and I saw him on that hillside in France—in the Var, whatever that
was—a man standing alone on a hillside. I saw him on a low, grassy hill that probably wasn’t a French hill at all; in fact, it was a hill outside of Madison, where I’d sometimes gone with Mike for picnics, but never mind that, for what I saw was that as he stood there figuring out the meaning of life, he felt something he hadn’t remotely touched on back in the museum.

C
HAPTER
27

There was a buzz at the brownstone the following week. Alice was moving out—really moving out, giving up her room to go live with her boyfriend in his two-room apartment near Tompkins Square. As Simon pointed out, she was going to be paying more rent to have less space, but that was love for you.

And luck for me, because I could have her room. Her high-ceilinged, twelve-by-fourteen room with two windows and a closet and a
door
. At $125 per month, it would mean adding just $25 to the $100 I got each month from my Madison subletter. It was so real, so thrilling, so
easy
.

“What do you think?” I said to Kilroy. “Should I take it?”

We were in his living room, he lying on the couch reading, I perched on its edge, still wearing the coat I’d put on for the walk over. It wasn’t really a question, I was just babbling, but the way he looked at me—something going on with his mouth, a kind of tightening of the upper lip—gave me a rush of fear.

“I mean,” I said. “That is—”

He closed the book around his finger and rested it against his stomach. “Why does it matter what I think?”

My heartbeat stumbled, and I looked across the room, to where the uncovered window reflected us back at ourselves. “It doesn’t,” I said. “I mean it does, but it shouldn’t.” For some reason I thought of my silk nightgown and robe, hidden in my bottom drawer. I looked back and met
his eye. “I don’t know, for a while there I was worried that you didn’t even think I should be taking my classes at Parsons.”

He sighed and looked away, then crossed his arms over his chest, his book still held tight. “Officer Kilroy,” he said. “Is that what I am?”

I was taken aback. “No.”

“Good,” he said. “I don’t want to be anyone’s cop, least of all yours.”

“Why least of all mine?”

“Because that way madness lies.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s just an expression,” he said. “A quote, as people so ignoramously say.” He opened the book and glanced at it, then closed it around his finger again.

“I’m confused,” I said.

He shook his head. “Never mind, let’s drop it. Take the room, by all means—I think it’s a good idea.”

I stared at him, his forearms crossed over the book, his blue-jeaned legs bent at the knee. I said, “I don’t want to drop it.”

He looked away.

“What’s going on?” I said. “You’re so aloof sometimes. You’re like this mass of untouchableness.”

He looked back and raised his eyebrows briefly, and the gesture enraged me: he could see this through, was what it meant. Bide his time till I was finished.

“Why do I know next to nothing about your past?” I cried. “Who did I remind you of in the museum?”

“You seem upset,” he said blandly.

“Fuck you!” I launched myself from the couch and stormed into the kitchen, where I opened the refrigerator, then slammed it shut once I’d felt the waft of cold. There was an empty beer bottle on the counter, and I could almost feel the smooth glass, the way it would roll across my palm before smashing into the far wall.

He came in after me and then stopped abruptly, his hands jammed in the front pockets of his jeans. After a moment he pulled them out and stuffed them into his back pockets. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this is hard for you. I’m not all that forthcoming.”

“You’re not
all that
forthcoming?”

He didn’t smile.

“What’s the deal with your parents?” I said. “With you and them?”

He shook his head wearily. “I’m not being evasive, it’s just—I wouldn’t even know how to begin to tell you.”

“Just do it.”

He exhaled hard, blowing upward so his hair lifted from his forehead for a moment. “One person’s ‘just do it’ is another person’s Mount Everest, OK?” He frowned. “Look, it’s just—I’ve always been a very private person, and being in this relationship with you is new to me.”

“Why are you in it?” I said sharply. My frustration felt huge, a great flying creature inside me, frantically beating its wings.

“Because you were irresistible,” he said. “Were and are.”

I sighed.

“It’s true.”

“Did you never want someone before?”

“Someone or anyone?”

“Either.”

“Not really. Sex was sort of a problem, but I found various ways to sublimate.”

We both laughed, and I felt a little better: his face lit up when he laughed, in the nicest way. I thought of crossing the room, the solace of his body. The solace and then the silence. We could make love right now, maybe right here in the kitchen, standing against the sink: with each thrust close, closer, and almost merging; and then afterward we’d stay pressed together while our quickened pulses slowed again, and the ebbing back into ourselves began.

He watched me hopefully—it was up to me. I ignored the temptation. “Why don’t you have any friends?”

He took a deep breath and let it out again. “Over the years I’ve had people to talk to and go to movies with and sit next to in bars and restaurants, but for one reason or another I mostly haven’t kept up with them.”

“You’re so casual about it.”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me, it’s not what I think about.”

“What do you think about?”

“Come on.”

“What?”

He rolled his eyes. “I think about whether or not to buy the
Daily News
. How to get from here to Chinatown without having to take the L. I think about the skin on the inside of your upper arm and whether or not I like sun-dried tomatoes.”

“Why the skin on the inside of my upper arm?”

“Fishing for compliments? Because it’s soft and private and I can smell a tiny bit of BO behind your deodorant.”

I snorted out a half laugh. “I guess I asked for that.”

“You didn’t ask for anything. Neither did I. We just—well, here we are, we’re together, and I’m glad.” He moved toward me and held his hand up, high-five style. After a moment I put my hand against it and he threaded his fingers between mine and held tight until I curled mine down, too. He said, “Are you in any doubt that that’s what I want?”

I shook my head. That was the funny thing—the hilarious thing: I was in no doubt at all. He wanted to be with me and I wanted to be with him, despite his secrets and his flares of misanthropy. They were part of the package, but mostly I kept them tucked away in a dark little room in my mind. I gave it a wide berth, sticking instead to the main corridors, where everything was clean and well-lit.