The Woman Upstairs (39 page)

Somehow, I had been filmed in that most private moment. Somehow, I had been seen; and could then be displayed, an object, like one of the artists in my own dioramas. I could be sacrificed. In the upper grades at school, you teach the kids ethics: you ask them, would they push a button that would kill an anonymous person in China, if they’d get a million dollars. Would they push the button if it made them famous. If nobody knew they’d pushed the button. If it meant the whole world would acclaim you as an artist. If it showed the world some genuine truth about what it was like to be a sad, lonely fucker. Would you?

Yes, it was true, if I thought about it, the cameras had already been set up, by then, for the kids—we’d set them up weeks ahead of time. I’d helped her do it. But how did she film me? She hadn’t been in the studio that day at all—had she? I couldn’t remember for sure. There must have been a motion-sensitive setting. She must have set the cameras to tape anytime anyone set foot in her Wonderland. Maybe she was taping herself? Maybe it wasn’t the plan to trap me, like a fish in a net; or maybe it was. Maybe she’d hoped she’d catch me there somehow—but she could never have anticipated such prize footage, such a perfect humiliation. When had she seen it? Had
he
seen it, too? And if he had, then suddenly his visit to the studio, his supposed seduction, became something completely different. It became something
between them
, something that had nothing to do with me. Something for which I was the unwitting scapegoat. She’d cared little enough to use the tape—to
sell
the tape—or else she’d been angry enough. But not angry enough to confront me; not angry enough (if she had known about Skandar and me) to think it merited discussion. I had been so discountable that she could do this to me, and claim to have remained my friend. What a year it had been: I’d been useful in so many ways.

There is what is imaginary and there is what is real. What is imaginary—how she taped me, why she taped me, whether she taped Skandar and me, when she decided to use the tape—these are things you cannot reach. Even if I asked her, I would never know the truth. What is imaginary—our friendships, my loves, these people, my
inventions—is untouchable, if not inviolate. And then, there is reality: there is what happens, what you know, or think you know, with certainty. But maybe these two are ultimately one; maybe you can’t protect the one from the other. There’s that room inside your mind where you are most freely and unconcernedly yourself, and then there are the many layers of masquerade by which you protect that skinless core; but there she was, my most unguarded self (a fantasy self!), famous at last, visible but invisible, hanging on a wall in Paris and five times sold.

And this, needless to say, by the woman—and not to forget, her husband—whom, among all mortals, I had chosen and drawn close to and loved, yes, wholeheartedly loved, and forgiven a myriad of shortcomings. But not this one. Never this one. I knew that even then, perched on the chair in the gallery sipping my cloudy glass of tepid, overchlorinated water and insisting to the youth that I did not need a taxi, or a doctor, that I would be on my feet and on my way in a matter of minutes—I knew in the middle of all this that I would never, ever, ever forgive her this. That she had—again, no: that they both had, because he must have known, at some point, he had
known
, and done nothing; or worse, had come to me only because he’d known—but this, surely, was not thinkable—not thinkable, that—they had ruthlessly destroyed everything, betrayed everything.

You don’t need suicides where there is murder.

I didn’t call them. I couldn’t even imagine calling them. I didn’t call Didi, either, although I might have, because I didn’t want to get into it.
How could I begin to explain what it meant, to see myself laid bare on Sirena’s gallery wall, the great rippling outrage of what it meant—about each of us, about myself perhaps most of all, about the lies I’d persistently told myself these many years. And all certain things suddenly wildly uncertain. And what about art, and being an artist: Is this, then, what it took to be something, to become someone? Was this what was meant by “sacrificing everything” for your art? Or at least, everyone?

Here’s the good part: I carried all this anger, full to the brim with it, and now it’s allowable. Now it’s justified. I’ve learned from my mistakes. I’ve been liberated by my failings: I’ve been a fool, but now I’m a wise fool. I’ve been crushed by the universe; I’ve frittered the gold of my affection on worthless baubles; I’ve been treated like dirt. You don’t want to know how angry I am. Nobody wants to know about that. I am furious at both of them—at the lie of their friendship, their false promises of the world and of art and of love—but just as mad at myself, at my stupid dreams, my misplaced trust, my worthless longing.

But to be furious, murderously furious, is to be
alive
. No longer young, no longer pretty, no longer loved, or sweet, or lovable, unmasked, writhing on the ground for all to see in my utter ingloriousness, there’s no telling what I might do. I could film my anger and sell it, I could do some unmasking of my own, beat the fuckers at their own game, and on the way I could become the best-known fucking artist in America, out of sheer spite. You never know. I’m angry enough to set fire to a house just by looking at it. It can’t be contained, stored away with the recycling. I’m done staying quietly upstairs. My anger is not a little person’s, a sweet girl’s, a dutiful daughter’s. My anger is prodigious. My anger is a colossus. I’m angry enough to understand why Emily Dickinson shut out the world altogether, why Alice Neel betrayed her children, even though she loved them mightily. I’m angry enough to see why you walk into the water with rocks in your pockets, even though that’s not the kind of angry I am. Virginia Woolf, in her rage, stopped being afraid of death; but I’m angry enough, at last, to stop being afraid of life, and angry enough—finally, God willing, with my mother’s anger also on my shoulders, a great boil of rage like the sun’s fire in me—before I die to fucking well
live
.

Just watch me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writing of this book would not have been possible without the generous support of the Humanities Center at Harvard, where it was begun, and of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, where it was completed. I am particularly grateful for the kindnesses of Professor Homi Bhabha and of Professors Joachim Nettelbeck and Luca Giuliani. My thanks also to Stephen Greenblatt and Ramie Targoff, for pointing me toward Berlin; to Diala Ezzedine and Hashim Sarkis, for sharing their knowledge, and Beirut, with me; to Beatrice Gruendler, for our discussions about Arabic literary history; and to all my fellow Fellows at the Kolleg, for inspiring conversations.

My thanks also, always, to my literary agents, Georges and Anne Borchardt; to my British agent, Felicity Rubinstein; to my British editor and dear friend Ursula Doyle at Virago; and to my U.S. editor Robin Desser at Knopf.

In what have been challenging years, the precious faith and friendship of a few have been invaluable. My particular thanks to Elizabeth Messud, Susanna Kaysen and John Daniels, Melissa Franklin, Sheila Gallagher, Shefali Malhoutra, Mark Gevisser, Ira Sachs, Mary Bing and Doug Ellis, Fiona Sinclair, Julie Livingston and, it goes without saying, to my indefatigable optimist, James Wood, and our two beloved children, Livia and Lucian.

My especial and ineffable gratitude to my father, François Michel Messud (1931–2010), who taught me the importance of laughter, and of rage, and who had no tolerance for the Fun House; and to my mother, Margaret Riches Messud (1933–2012), who lived lightly upon this earth, whose letters taught me how to write and whose eyes taught me how to see.

PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Hal Leonard Corporation for permission to reprint “My Happy Ending,” words and music by Avril Lavigne and Butch Walker. Copyright © 2004 by Almo Music Corp., Avril Lavigne Publishing Ltd., EMI Blackwood Music Inc. and Sonotrock Music. All rights for Avril Lavigne Publishing Ltd. controlled and administered by Almo Music Corp. All rights for Sonotrock Music controlled and administered by EMI Blackwood Music Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

A Note About the Author

Claire Messud’s most recent novel,
The Emperor’s Children
, was a
New York Times
,
Los Angeles Times
and
Washington Post
Best Book of the Year. Her first novel,
When the World Was Steady
, and her book of novellas,
The Hunters
, were both finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award; and her second novel,
The Last Life
, was a
Publishers Weekly
Best Book of the Year and Editor’s Choice at
The Village Voice
. All four books were named
New York Times
Notable Books of the Year. Messud has been awarded Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and children.

Other titles by Claire Messud available in eBook format

The Emperor’s Children
978-0-307-26601-9
When the World Was Steady
978-0-307-80656-7

Like:
www.facebook.com/clairemessud

For more information, please visit
www.aaknopf.com

READER’S GUIDE

The Woman Upstairs

by Claire Messud

The introduction, discussion questions and suggested further reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of best-selling author Claire Messud’s brilliant new novel,
The Woman Upstairs
.

Introduction

The novel opens with a furious self-introduction by the narrator, Nora Eldridge, an elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “How angry am I? You don’t want to know. Nobody wants to know about
that
” (
this page
). Just past forty now, she has led the life of a good girl and good daughter, a good teacher who’s good with the kids but not always so good with herself. She has become “the woman upstairs”: quiet, polite, smiling, causing no trouble. But now she is furious. She wants to set the world on fire. The journey that brought her to this point unfolds as the novel moves forward.

The trouble begins with what at first appears to be a godsend: the arrival in Cambridge of the Shahid family from Paris. Seven-year-old Reza, an enchanting boy, joins her class, and soon Nora meets his charming, sophisticated parents: Skandar, a visiting scholar at Harvard, and Sirena, an installation artist on the cusp of international fame.
Nora falls in love with all of them, both separately and together, and in the process oversteps the boundaries she has so carefully created for herself. When Reza is attacked by schoolyard bullies, Nora is drawn deep into the family’s complex and alluring world.

Nora’s growing friendship with Sirena also reawakens her own artistic ambitions, which were largely abandoned when she became a teacher. Sirena is working on a new sculptural and video-based installation called Wonderland, based in part on the dream-world into which Lewis Carroll’s Alice descends, to premier at a major show in Paris. Fueled by Sirena’s vision and creativity, Nora dives into her own project: small-scale dioramas of the rooms of four different female artists, each radical in her own way. Working with Sirena, working on her art, Nora feels fully alive, energized and inspired. “I was awake in my life in a way completely new to me,” she says, “and I knew that anything … was possible” (
this page
). But this moment of exaltation is short-lived; Nora’s relationship with the Shahids becomes more dependent, more complicated—and more and more fascinating for the reader, right up to the surprising, shattering conclusion.