Beautiful Girl (21 page)

Outside, in the bright cool October air, the leaves slowly darkened from yellow to burnished gold, and in the house the rooms were full of the sounds of flutes and clarinets, of violins and cellos—Brahms and Schubert, Boccherini, Telemann.

Which is not to say that Penelope was really
well:
when, as she infrequently did, she got out of bed and moved around the house, her movements were painfully, haltingly slow. But she talked a lot now—gently, amusingly, affectionately. She was so nearly her old self that it was hard for Van not to hope: perhaps she could be like this for years?

Only once—on the day, in fact, of the first snowfall of that season, a light white dusting that lay softly among the meadow grass—on that day, with the most terrible sadness, Penelope asked, “Do you know what this is like?” (She did not have to explain what she meant by “this.”) “It’s like having to separate from someone you’re wildly in love with. When you desperately think that you’d give twenty years
of your life for another hour together. I wonder if maybe that’s what I’ve done. Taken extra hours. Made that bargain, somehow. Sometime.”

Unbearably moved, at the same time Van experienced a spurt of jealousy. About whom had she felt such a desperate love? Not for him; their love affair had been passionate but without despair. No anguished separations. He himself had felt such desperation for his “dark prize,” a feeling that he had forgotten, or that did not occur to him now.

But then smilingly Penelope said, “Van, darling, I do feel guilty about your staying up here so much, but of course it is lovely,” and she reached to touch his hand with her white, white blue-veined hand.

She even looked, in a way, quite wonderful: the vague pale scarves about her head intensified the darkness of her eyes, the firm small structure of her nose. You look beautiful, he wanted to say, but he was afraid of a sound of mockery.

Early in the summer after Penelope died, Van married Joan. (Penelope died, as he had feared, while he was on the road, during one of those horrendously dull blurs between Auburn and San Francisco, early in November.) Van and Joan moved her expensive possessions up the hill from her Ashbury apartment to his Twin Peaks flat.

It all worked out quite well, including the furniture, which fit. Joan stopped being a Kelly Girl and took cooking lessons, and became a skillful cook. They made love often, and for the most part happily.

The only problem was—that Van was just slightly bored. As he had surmised some time ago, Joan was not a very interesting woman. But he didn’t really mind this touch of boredom; it left him more time to himself. Since they talked
rather little, Van began to read books that he had “always meant” to read. Novels, in fact, that Penelope had recommended. Proust,
Middlemarch, Anna Karenina
and, finally,
Wuthering Heights
, which made him weep—all alone, over a final brandy.

In fact, since Joan was a person who lived most vitally during the day (her favorite time for love was on waking, in the morning), and who often went to bed very early, Van took to drinking a little too much late at night, alone, confronted with his dark and sprawling city view of the light-scattered San Francisco hills. Penelope had been a night person; she had chosen this flat for its spectacular night view.

He had sold the mountain house soon after Penelope died, at a loss, because he was unable to imagine a stay up there without her. And now sometimes he dreamily imagined that he was back in the mountains, imagined that the actual sounds of traffic below his windows were river sounds, and that he was with Penelope.

Unhappily it was not always a loving and gentle Penelope that he believed he was with; he could remember Penelope the shrew quite accurately. (Had she been shrewish on purpose so that he would miss her less? He could believe that of complex Penelope.)

But now when she hissed that he didn’t love her, that she was not his type—now he could say, and strongly enough to convince her, “You’re the most remarkable and interesting woman I’ve ever known. I’ve never really loved anyone but you.”

The Xs are moving to Israel, and I am taking it badly; I am in near-mourning over their imminent loss. If it were another couple—non-friends, or non-close friends—I would probably think, Oh, how nice, a new start, how adventurous. Or, if I were a nicer, more imaginative and generous person (possibly sometimes I am, but not this month, this winter), I might think, Oh, how great for Judith and Daniel X.

This is January, in San Francisco, and we are having a heat wave. For a while it was fun, walking around Pacific Heights in jeans and a cotton shirt, among the deceived and unnaturally flowering blossom trees, in the middle of winter. A woman up the street, sitting on her front steps with her bare legs outstretched to the sun, remarked to me, “Well, this year we don’t have to go to Palm Springs.”

But then it became ominous, such heat and dryness, with no snow falling up in the Sierras. There are headlines
about drought, water shortages, dying cattle, meat prices—and no sign of rain.

A few weeks ago I went to a large rather elaborate dinner party: mostly older people, mostly rich. And when it came time to go home I could not find the small black silk bag I had brought. The composition of the party made theft fairly unlikely; still, there is always the closet kleptomaniac. There was nothing in the purse except a compact and lipstick and comb, and the bag itself had not been expensive, but it was pretty, the simple sort of envelope that is inexplicably hard to find.

I am not sure why I bring this up. I suppose to add, by way of contrast, a minor loss.

What I am saying is: I think I am reacting in an extreme way to the departure of the Xs partly because the world seems to me to be getting worse.

I do not even have the excuse of their being oldest, long-term friends. (My oldest friend, in fact another Judith, lives in Washington, D.C.; she is a terrible correspondent.) I have only known the Xs for a couple of years. But I like them both enormously; perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I love them.

•  •  •

Judith and Daniel. Both dark, very attractive, strong and healthy and intelligent people. Married for a long time, four children who are grown and gone. They still like each other. To put it negatively, they are not crazy or destructive people. Daniel smokes too much but that is the worst thing I can say about either of them.

My son just called to say that his grandfather had died, the father of my first husband, from whom I am divorced. The old man was once powerfully wicked, monstrously
present
in my life, but I no longer think of him. Simon, my son, and I agree that many people, including his father, will be relieved, and rich. Still.

I tell Simon that the Xs are moving to Israel; he has met and liked them.

He says, “If I were moving anywhere I’d rather live in Wales.”

Wales? As far as I know, none of our people are from there. England, Scotland, Ireland. But is that important?

Will Simon inherit enough money to move to Wales?

Daniel X inherited a business that he did not much like, but, having married very young and been so young a father, he was rather stuck with it. He was a good sport, not complaining, but anyone could see that he was better suited to a more intellectual calling; he could have been a physicist, a mathematician, perhaps a poet. And now in early middle age he is to be free of that business, to sell it and emigrate. (One of the X daughters has said, “Other parents get divorced, or die. You
emigrate.
”) While her youngest child was in high
school Judith studied social work; now she works in a clinic in my neighborhood. I walk a lot, and sometimes I drop in, and if she is free we talk for five or ten minutes. Often she is busy, but she always manages to convey warmth and welcome anyway; this is one of her special skills.

Do I begin to convey what I will miss?

Voracious novel reading is a common ground. Last year Daniel insisted that I read
Something Happened
, which I had lazily put off; so
long.
And he was right, it is wonderful. And we recommend good rereads to each other. Judith recently rediscovered
Middlemarch
, Daniel reread
Moby Dick
and
The Possessed.
(In general, he is fond of Russian novels, whereas Judith and I are more apt to read the English.) I reread
Great Expectations
and some Trollope.

(My private formula for a depression is all of Jane Austen; it may be time for her now.)

Everyone, or everyone I know, feels warmly and strongly about the Xs. Only once did I hear a negative remark about them, and that was from a harsh, competitive woman, Ms. Z, who was, I believe, simply tired of hearing Judith, in particular, so much praised. “Well,” said Ms. Z. (She has an especially unpleasant voice: loud and condescending, with a fake “Eastern” accent.) “Well, I really feel that most of her relationships are very superficial.” Though hostile, Ms. Z is not stupid; there may have been a sort of truth in her remark, if she meant that Judith’s friends are less important to her than she to them. (Another truth may be that Judith’s feelings for Ms. Z are superficial.) I for one don’t mind. I
accept the fact that her husband and children are the center of Judith’s life—and Israel; she has always had a strong emotional-ideological attachment to Israel. Both she and Daniel come from originally Central European Jewish families who suffered horrors under Hitler—agonizing deaths and deprivations; of course they feel strongly about Israel.

They have often visited there. They love it.

Israel. I see deserts and sand dunes, modern architecture superimposed on ancient cities. Scholars and statesmen. Chaim Weizmann, Golda Meir. Maps, arrows, darkened areas of trouble. Televised wars.

In a way I envy this attachment of the Xs to another country. When, as increasingly happens, I cannot stand the directions taken by this one—the support of wars and governments that I hate, the nonsupport of the old and sick and poor—I am sadly aware of having nowhere else to go. I love northern Italy, and southern France, but I don’t think I could live in either place.

I would think that you have to be passionately committed to Israel to live there. Possibly you have to be Jewish?

So, then, a part of my reaction is envy? I might have known.

At the same party at which I lost my black silk bag, an old, ill-looking man was talking a lot about how terrible Cesar Chavez is, mentioning wetbacks, Kennedys, Catholics
and more wetbacks. I said at last that although not a wetback, a Kennedy nor even a Catholic, I admired Mr. Chavez very much.

He thought I was accusing him of calling me a wetback. Hopeless confusion. He sputtered off, enraged, his face a darker, more unhealthy mottled red.

I wonder: is it possible that he stole my bag, hoping to find subversive literature, or dope? Or could he be the closet kleptomaniac (or
queen
)? I would love for these things to be true, any of them, but I am afraid he is simply a sick reactionary.

As I have not said so far, I too am part of a couple. And I suppose our relationship with the Xs is characteristic of such couple friendships: the strong bond is between Judith and me. The men like each other well enough but without us, the women, they would probably not know each other.

Daniel is an extremely attractive man, but (fortunately) I am never turned on by husbands of women I like. I would guess that Judith is the same.

Judith calls, and because we so infrequently speak on the phone at first I don’t recognize her voice. But then I do, and I begin to make concealing jokes about how terrible it is that they are leaving.

She laughs in her affectionate way, and she says, “Oh, you’re really wonderful—I love you—yours is really the best reaction. Everyone else is saying how great.”

I tell her that I am just entirely selfish.

“Well, what are you doing now?”

“Now?”

“Why don’t you two come over for dinner? I’m making some veal.”

(Judith is an exceptional cook. Of course.)

My husband (my third: Israel is not all that I envy Judith for; this one is nice, usually, but the two divorces were not nice at all), this husband says, comfortingly, “Well, maybe they’re not really serious. You know, it could be just an idea.”

I laugh gratefully. “Like the way I talk about moving to Verona?”

“Yes, sort of like that.”

In this crazy weather I never know what to wear; it’s even hot at night. I settle on a favorite long summer cotton dress.

As we walk toward their house we can see Judith and Daniel through their front windows; and somehow, sinkingly, from their postures I know that they are serious about Israel.

“Serious” is in fact the correct word to describe that evening. Despite good wines and superlative (as always) food, none of us is light-hearted.

We have come there, really, to hear in detail the Xs’ plans, and we do; we hear all about it, we argue and concede.

They are going to sell everything, Daniel says: his business, their comfortable large house—this house—and their
summer country cabin. My husband, in many ways a practical man (although a sculptor, an excellent one, and he teaches at a local art school)—he suggests that they rent this house for a while, instead of selling, and have the rent as income, there in Israel.

“No.” Daniel has thought of and rejected this. “I want to go there completely committed. We’re not just sticking our toes in the water.”

They will go, then, with a fair amount of money. Which they are going to use to buy or invest in a new business: an English language bookstore. They are informed that there is room for such a shop in Jerusalem, which is where they want to live. The book business appeals strongly to them both, and we have to admit that it makes sense.

(Now, this is curious: the more definite their intentions sound, the better I am able to accept them. As one would a clear diagnosis—I am not glad, not at all, but merely sad, rather than darkly depressed.)

By the end of the evening we are saying that we will all meet glamorously in Rome, or that we will come to visit them in Jerusalem.