Spirit Lost (13 page)

“You’re an artist,” George went on. “You have the soul of the artist, the mind of the artist, the desires of the artist. You read poetry, you will admit that poetry is as much a part of your mental makeup as, say, football might be of the average man’s. Right?”

John nodded in agreement.

“Now,” George went on, “you come to a crisis in your life. You have put it all on the line, everything. You’ve decided to act like an artist, to work at your art. You’ve left your job, your friends, your hometown. You’ve gone off to an island and isolated yourself, you’ve put everything you’ve got into this decision, this desire … this
obsession
, if I may. Let’s say that secretly you’re worried, a little anxious about this decision. Let’s say you’re feeling a little alone against the world now … not even Willy can help you in this situation. It’s all up to you to prove yourself as an artist. Your self-esteem, your self-image, perhaps even the
meaning of your life
, depend on whether or not you make it as an artist.

“A lot of stress for the mind to take. A pretty heavy task for a man to bear alone. So what does your subconscious do for you to help you out during this time? You’re a literate, well-read man.… Your subconscious pulls an idea out of the vast well of knowledge hidden in your mind and presents you with
—a muse
.”

George leaned back in his chair, triumphant. He smiled. Took a large sip of wine. Lit a cigarette.

Anne was too fascinated even to think of clearing off the dessert plates or suggesting that they move into the living room for coffee.

“George,” she said, “what a marvelous idea.”

George nodded, agreeing. “It all fits, you see. This is why the ‘ghost’ is female. Young. Beautiful. It’s why Willy never sees her. Why she came to the attic
where John works
. Why she came, as it were, not from inside the house but from the heavens. Why she visits you at night, the time when the subconscious is filling up with creative power. Remember when you first saw her? You said you were drawing seaweed streaming like hair. Then you drew her
—then
she appeared in the window. She is figment of your imagination, John. You have invented her because you need her.”

John looked at Willy. He had not told the Hunters everything; he had said only that the ghost leaned over him at the bedside. They had not told them about the times she had kissed John or touched him intimately.

“My guess is,” George went on, “that she’ll continue to appear to you as long as you have any anxiety about your work. At least until you get settled into it and believe that what you’re doing has some kind of merit. It’s too much to take on alone. You’re really very clever, don’t you see? You’ve provided yourself with a muse to inspire you.”

“And your advice is …” Anne prompted.

“To go with it. Relax. Accept her. Don’t be afraid of her. Let her into your life, into your mind, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the creative juices didn’t start to flow for you. But don’t fight it. Don’t try to pretend she doesn’t appear or be angry when she does. I think your mind is doing this in order to help you, John. Your ‘ghost’ is on your side.”

There was complete silence in the room. Mark broke it, saying, “Listen, George, do you think you could arrange for me to have one of those? Do a little hypnosis with me and get me a little gorgeous, nubile nighttime visitor that my wife couldn’t see? God, John, I think you’ve really tapped into something marketable here. I mean, a pretty woman who comes into your bedroom but your wife can’t see her?”

“You’re going to get it later,” Anne threatened, and everyone laughed and the tension broke. People rose, pushed their chairs back, went into the living room. Anne asked about coffee, tea, and the conversation turned to other things.

Willy watched John, who seemed more at ease now, perhaps because he was engaged in a conversation with Diana, who was nice, or perhaps, Willy thought, Willy hoped, because George Glidden, for all his pomposity, had somehow helped John. And George was smart, a fine psychiatrist—he could be right. He really could be right. The creative mind
was
an odd thing. She had wondered before what she would have thought if Pablo Picasso had been her husband and had wandered in with one of his abstracts; would she have thought to praise him, or would she have called the doctor?

Anne served the coffee and brandies, then sank down on the sofa next to Willy.

“Old times,” she said. “Lovely having you two here.” She leaned closer, said sotto voce, “And we can gossip about them when they’ve gone.”

Willy smiled back, a conspirator’s smile, but she didn’t feel it in her heart. There was a distance now between her and Anne. First of all, Anne talked about little else but the baby that was due in a month; she went on and on about how it kicked, about labor and childbirth tales she had heard and names she and Mark were deciding on.

It seemed to Willy that Anne had talked of nothing else these past three days. Yet
Anne meant to be close; she told Willy the most intimate details about her body changes and her sex life now with Mark. It was Willy who had drawn back and caused the distance, really. She did not feel comfortable talking about John’s “ghost” with Anne, for one thing; she had not yet been able to decide just how she felt about it.

Actually she was frightened—and jealous, and angry. And then she and John had agreed not to tell anyone about that final night when he felt someone fondling him. They had tacitly agreed not to discuss it with each other, either; it was just too difficult to discuss—and what could they say? That it was bizarre? They both knew that. There were no precedents they could follow in dealing with this, no how-to books on the subject. They were just muddling along, hoping that it would all go away—hoping the ghost would go away and leave them alone with their lives.

But now Willy thought: It was possible that George Glidden was right. It was possible that John, in his great desire to develop his art, had put himself under the sort of mental stress that would make him create a muse, need a muse. Willy didn’t pretend to understand how the mind worked, especially the artistic mind. She wasn’t an artist, and yet there were times when she needed to be alone, when she needed her solitude and whatever daydreams floated through her mind as she embroidered. She could not have worked in the presence of company. Perhaps it was the same sort of thing for John, taken to an extreme degree. He needed his solitude and the visions that his creative energies provided him.

Willy decided to try to relax about it all. To believe that somehow George Glidden’s theory was on the right track. To let John have his muse, his “ghost,” and not to mind. After all, if this vision, this muse, this
thing
, whatever she was, from wherever she had been called forth, helped John in his art, she would be valuable; she would help John be happy, and in the long run, she would help Willy and John in their marriage.

The next evening, as they drove to Hyannis to take the car ferry back to Nantucket, Willy said some of these things to John. She told him that perhaps George Glidden had been right; that perhaps they shouldn’t fight the “ghost” or be afraid of her, but rather let her into their lives.

“Let’s see what happens,” she said.

John had been quiet, listening to Willy. “George is such an ass,” he said.

“I know,” Willy agreed. “But he’s not stupid. He knows a lot. And what better explanation can you provide for the presence of your ghost? I prefer it to anything else I can think of.”

John took a deep breath, holding down anger. “All right,” he said at last. “All right.
Fine
. That’s
fine
with me. Let’s leave it at that, can we? I’m sick of it.”

He felt his wife’s gaze on him then, felt her worry and compassion directed toward him, even sensed how she was now searching for the right words to say to him, how she was working on it rather than just speaking naturally. So before she could go on, he said more gently, “Please, Willy. Let’s leave it alone.” He looked over at her, forcing himself to smile for her. “Let’s talk about something else in the world,” he said. “I think we’ve beaten this topic to death.”

Willy reached over and stroked John’s hair briefly. “Sweetie,” she said. Then—and Thank God! John thought—she yawned and removed her hand and leaned against the car door. “I’m going to take a little nap if you don’t mind,” she said. “All those late nights …”

“Go ahead,” John said. “We’ve got a good forty-five more minutes before we reach Hyannis.”

When she was asleep, John’s relief was enormous. It had been hard to keep from unfairly directing his anger at Willy; it had been a strain all during this “vacation.” It was not really Willy’s fault, or if it was, she had only meant well, had only meant to be helpful. Still, he felt violated. Betrayed. Insulted. To have that egomaniac George Glidden analyzing what was deepest and dearest to him had been infuriating. Even to have the man possess that knowledge was horrible. It had been hard enough to let Willy, and then Mark, and then his colleagues at the agency know that he wanted to be an artist, a
real
artist. They were his friends; he could trust them, and if he failed, they would not laugh. But it had been almost intolerable to have a roomful of people discussing how the strength of his need was making him hallucinate. It was as if he had been coerced into stripping off his clothes and parading around naked, showing off some strange, slightly disgusting, slightly erotic growth on his body. No one had the right to such invasions of privacy. Not even Willy, really.

His mistake had been not to build up sufficient defenses, to speak to others of his
art, assuming the others would have the sense to give him the dignity of distance. He had been friendly, including them, making his art seem a sort of communal thing, and it was not that way at all. This was not a topic for a committee and could not be passed around and democratized like the decisions for advertising copy for artwork. He was the one most at fault for talking about it in the first place. If he wanted them to leave him alone, he had to learn to deal with it—all of it—by himself. He could do that. He
would
do that.

Even deal with the ghost. God, what was she, after all, what did she do? Nothing so terrible, nothing destructive or harmful. She was an adolescent boy’s fantasy, in a way. The beautiful woman who comes unbidden to do unspeakable things to his body in the middle of the night. If he couldn’t deal with that by himself, what kind of man was he?

He had to change. Pull in. Withdraw. Isolate himself, delve into himself, if he was going to get any real work done. Willy could stand it; she knew what he was up to, and she could let him have that freedom, knowing that it was only another part of their lives together, only another time in their marriage. She knew how much he loved her. And she was strong, she had her own resources.

This time, John thought as he steered the car around the rotary toward the long road that paralleled the Cape Cod Canal, this time I’m really going to settle in and work. This time I’m serious. This time I’m not going to let anything stop me, not self-doubts or friendly temptations or ghostly interruptions.

The ferry approached over dark water. Fathoms deep lay treasure, jewels and gold, sunken boats, lovers lost forever, their white bones gleaming, caught in the streaming seaweed, washed along with stones and rubies and brass buckles from belts and shoes, froth and plunder of the sea.

John leaned on the railing of the ferry, liking the cold slap of wet wind, the darkness. The lights of Nantucket were in the distance. Beneath him now lay mysteries, joys and terrors he could not imagine. And he thought how the land was all man knew of civilization and security; the sea was all he could bear to know of the wild, the amoral, the unguessed.