Cast in Doubt (11 page)

Still, Helen’s reticence marks her as special if not unique, like a piece of art. I treasure her though she undoubtedly has a flaw, not unlike the golden bowl. I’m not sure what her flaw is or how to judge it. Yet I know she has one, perhaps many. These will deepen with age. But she has time, a great deal of time. It is pleasant to sit with her, to let time drift. I am spending her time. I look with her toward the sea. We are silent for long periods. She respects silence. She may be mulling things over or thinking of absolutely nothing. I do find her reticence akin to art, as art makes order out of chaos, and I think there must be a great deal of it in her life—chaos, that is.

The sea stretches before us. I meditate upon the artists, like Turner and Monet, who painted sky and sea, who were bewitched by the grandeur of nature, its unfathomability, its mystery. Nature hides the sea’s deeper life from us; normally we see only a watery surface. A painting reflects that surface, containing the chaos we fear beneath. I rely on art and need order, but I’m not sure that Helen does, in the same way. Or if she does these needs haven’t yet made a definite impression on her character. She never speaks of art, of paintings, just of music, movies and television, and books, occasionally. At least she reads them.

Sometimes I look at her and remind myself: Helen was born when you were past forty, Horace, or she was born after the Korean War, or during the heyday of the abstract expressionists, which would mean nothing to her. Both aspects of the thought interest me—how old I was when she was born and that she wouldn’t care about that art movement or even the Korean War. I was moderately opposed to the Korean War. I was not indifferent to the abstract expressionists, though I was not convinced by them, either. They were so male, for one thing, and I distrusted their blatant masculinity. I admired the surrealists, Duchamp especially; he broke new ground. One saw the surrealists about New York in the forties, during the Second World War. In my heart of hearts, I have to confess a preference for Caravaggio, Matisse, Edward Hopper, and Cézanne. Where would the cubists have been without Cézanne!

In some ways I am in favor of what is new, almost on principle. I will argue this principle to the death, especially with Roger. Pop art was a welcome change—it leapt out when life was so dull, during the Eisenhower years, but it blossomed a little later, I remember. On a visit to New York in the sixties I saw marvelous art exhibitions. Gwen took me to the Factory, where I felt shy, and hung about awkwardly posing, and never did see Andy Warhol. I don’t think I could have managed it. I would have had to behave reverentially and he wouldn’t have found me attractive. But the boys around the Factory were wonderfully attractive, if somewhat frightening. The ambience was immensely different from that of the Cedar Tavern. Very perverse, but I enjoyed it even if it intimidated me. It was most assuredly a different intimidation from that created by those masculine painters with their burly arms and broad backs, who boldly discussed their paintings and their women—but mostly their paintings—over shots of Scotch and chasers of beer.

I assume Helen appreciates Andy Warhol, though she has mentioned only the group he spawned, the Velvet Underground, not that she ever saw them live, she explained to me. I am used not to seeing things live. Helen has never been to the Cedar Tavern. She has a dim recollection of hearing about it either when she was posing or when she took an art class from a bearded man who wore work shirts, a costume she found funny. By funny I think she means many things, but I’m afraid to pry too much.

It was the beginning of the time when Helen abjured any kind of naturalness and had dyed her hair and pierced her nose, for a nose ring. The nose ring, a stud, horrified Alicia. Smitty wears it less often these days, but when she does, it’s worn indifferently, almost as if it were meaningless, and perhaps it is to her. How Alicia went on about it! It fits Helen, though, to transform and mark her body. She is a bold canvas on which everything appears to have landed with abandon, with splatters here and there; and her scars, most invisible to the eye, and marks, tangible and intangible, about these nothing must be said. And no, no explanations will be given.

From her point of view, it may be that we’ve known each other all our lives, but mine is so much longer than hers. Yet this may account for her not needing to reveal herself to me in any specific sense. When Helen does reveal herself, she does it without guile, as if dropping her clothes before an audience of art students meant to study and render the female form. Along with artist’s modeling, she has done go-go dancing and stripping. Do you miss home? I ask her, as the sun dips low, peeking slyly above the horizon.

Helen first left home one summer when she was sixteen; she left it without regret, it seems, and casually mentions having taken up with a couple of guys and having gone on the road with a friend, hitchhiking. It is nearly inconceivable to me that she has actually done these things. Helen stripping and hitchhiking. When she attended college, briefly—and though they were not speaking, I gather—her parents paid her tuition. What did and do her parents think of her? Did John, does he, want to protect her? Do men still want to protect women, if they ever did?

Roger has been joined by a blond Adonis. It is not true that I take Roger’s castoffs. It is nearly opposite to the truth, not apposite to it. The blond may be Manolis, one of those feminine boys who fled to Athens. He’s matured excellently. Roger will take him in for a while, I know, then tire of him. Roger is a coquette, more coquettish than Helen has ever been, I’m sure. She glances from me to Roger several times, but says nothing. She is observing our scene and sometimes I feel queasy about this. She sips her coffee and asks, rather innocently, Does Roger pay him?

He may, I answer, disconcerted. I’m not sure why this question irks me. Perhaps she thinks I pry Yannis too. I won’t ask, though to a girl who has stripped for money this might not mean very much anyway. I change the subject abruptly, but she is unperturbed. I observe that she appeared to be excited earlier, when I saw her on her terrace. Had something happened? I ask. Helen stops eating. It was weird, she begins, which always signals to me some fresh revelation. She was reading and felt happy. She was happy for no reason. Nothing was really different. Yet she seems to have experienced a sudden rush, a release. Everything might be all right, after all. She knew suddenly, she said, that she could be whatever she wanted, because she could simply make it up. She felt freer. The past didn’t matter really. It was just a story, and she could always change the story. She asks if I have ever felt like that. Before I can respond, she says, with relish, that the only other time she ever was as happy was when she was watching a movie whose title she has forgotten, but it was as if she were a movie with a happy ending. Helen laughs quietly, her hand covering her mouth. I tell her she’s had an epiphany. She laughs even more.

Now she looks twelve. Unbearably defenseless. Part of her mask has dropped, and she’s stripped bare or stripping. She may reveal her true self to me. I don’t know what else to say to her. I ought to say something else but the expression on her face reminds me of myself at her age. I remember, even sense, my youthful expectation of life’s limitlessness, my naive belief in possibility. I would not have compared my self or my happiness with a movie’s end, but looking at her, I feel the crush of memory. And, as if memory were physical, it forces me lower in my chair. I drink more wine. I feel queasy, aware of an unspeakable emptiness below my heart. I take her hand and say something to the effect that, yes, Helen, everything will indeed be all right. I shut my eyes so that she won’t see that there are tears in them. But she pats my hand understandingly. It is suddenly darker. She is barely visible.

Impulsively, to pluck us from this dangerous and lugubrious patch, I announce what I meant not to tell her. I tell her almost comically, making light of it, that I visited John in the hospital, with Alicia. I emphasize the accidental nature of the visit, my surprise as to his identity and their connection, and so on. You’re kidding, Helen responds, and then grows pensive. She adds, If you’re not, it’s unbelievable. It stinks.

Stinks? I hadn’t really expected her not to believe me. I don’t see, I answer, why you’re so angry. It’s simply true. I had no idea, and frankly, dear, I don’t like being told that any of my stories stink. Helen withdraws into herself for a while, but she doesn’t leave the table. I question why I care, of course, why I allow her feelings any importance at all. She’s just a young girl who knows nothing; and surely it is I who invests her with power.

I study Helen and recognize a child, hurt, alone, anxiously searching, looking at the sea and the wide world, which I know is smaller and more impenetrable than the object of her gaze suggests. Attempting to dismiss her doesn’t work, as I genuinely like her and am attached to her against my better judgment. In a state, I nervously consume another glass of wine, nearly gagging as it goes down. Helen speaks at last and claims that she doesn’t like liars very much, even though she lies sometimes. “I lie. People lie all the time. But you should admit it.” In this moment she reminds me of Gwen.

I’ve never been able to admit I’ve lied, to anyone. I’d rather die, and, muddled and soft as I have become, I can’t stand her indignant scorn. Oh, Helen, I sputter, I don’t see anything wrong in my being interested in your friends and your life. It is not precisely prying.

I am appalled to hear myself sound like a father or mother. John is no friend of mine, she insists with annoyance, he wasn’t really even a boyfriend. He’s a worse liar than you. Then she pauses and asks if John is trying to move in on Alicia—to move in on rather than in with, I note. Her delivery is flat; it’s a sophisticated voice, with little inflection. It’s a voice I hadn’t yet heard, from her. I am taken aback. I visualize Helen in the city, urbanely testing her young tongue in tandem with similarly dressed girls, who sit in clubs with boys like John. They are clever and wild, the girls Gwen wrote me about. Helen may indeed have been one. When I was her age, I would have been frightened to death by people, young women, like her. It’s especially her psychological astuteness that unnerves me. She taps her cigarette on the table, and I light it for her. She looks me directly in the eye. I try not to flinch.

Helen seems to be weakening. After all, I am her only friend here, I and Chrissoula, who can’t really talk to her. But now Helen falls silent again. Her silence may deepen into a resolve not to speak. So I do, after drinking another glass of wine; I make myself vulnerable to her. Unquestionably I want to appease her.

Ultimately, Helen, I offer, in the end everyone knows everyone. I don’t know why. It must have to do with age, with how the world grows small conceptually as we grow older. We are connected whether we want to be or not. We are all connected. I toss this out, quite off the cuff, but the reasoning will serve, I hope. Then I follow with the connected notion, to my mind, that physicists deem an equation elegant when it’s executed particularly well, when it is beautiful, and that makes science close to art. Do you mean, Horace, she interjects, again in that sophisticated voice, do you mean, to you, John and I make an elegant equation?

It is not like Helen to draw paranoid conclusions. I don’t know what you mean, Helen, I answer. I am not Machiavelli. Helen agrees that I am not but goes on to remind me that I am a writer. She’s known a couple, and even had one in the family, but no one really famous. My mind races through some possibilities, but her last name—Nash—only brings me to Ogden, and I’m sure he’s not in her family. Helen may be traveling under an assumed name, carefully hiding the identity of a famous father or uncle, or grandfather. I don’t know why I need to, again I’m being impetuous, but I ask, Do I remind you of your father, Helen? She stares at me quizzically and then answers that I do, but only when I ask questions like that. He’s a shrink, she says. Helen swallows her retsina in one gulp. A shrink, I repeat after her. A horrible word, I think. A shrink, I say again. Helen adds, Children of shrinks are really fucked up. And, in the definitive way she has said this, it is as if she were bringing to a conclusion my own queries and thoughts.

I nod in agreement. It’s as if we are and are not discussing her. She has already told me that she is, as she puts it, fucked up, but now I think she’s being ironic, at least in this very moment. This is getting heavy, she says, with a half-smile. Yes, I know, Helen, we are not supposed to get heavy with each other. She laughs again—Helen often does when I use her argot.

It dawns on me that she has told me next to nothing about John and her, only that John is a liar, as am I. She is most definitely artful, and I am still curious. John was a sort of boyfriend. They are not friends. I feel more sadness welling inside me. Children leave each other without a second thought. I was; I did. All those wonderful men, those friends, lovers, and I’ll never see them again. Each face is a drop of memory that is diluted by time and dissolves; nothing rests or stays still long enough to form into a clear image. They’ve drifted away, or I did. Helen doesn’t realize how precious all those moments are, and John—how beautiful he is, with those violet eyes and soft lips. I’d hold him to me forever were he mine. I’d love to make love with John. I gaze at Helen vacantly. Perhaps. With her, too. The thought scandalizes me. Am I blanching? Would this idea horrify her? Probably not. I have learned over the years that only one’s own thoughts can ever genuinely shock one.

I swivel in my chair, pull myself up and talk to Helen pompously, as if giving a lecture. I suppose I feel the need to appear sensible and knowing, because I am wondering at myself, questioning whether my friendship with her has somehow to do with a kind of frustrated heterosexuality, though I think it hasn’t in this case. I am not attracted to her. I do accept Freud’s notion of an original bisexuality. Certainly in dreams I’ve desired men and women, even simultaneously, yet in life I rarely ever find a woman sexually attractive, sexually desirable.