“
Non a terrore per me la morte, presso al mio amore
⦔ I sing as I step fearlessly out the door and discard what smells so bad.
It's not Sonny. Sonny is too frail and fleshless and freshly killed to smell.
It's the food he's brought. The smell of it has made me nearly sick to my stomach. I've removed it from the kitchen sink and thrown it right into the can outside the back door. I regard it not as evidence but as garbage.
I should think I'd be absolutely tabescent, but I'm not. I feel strong and whole and hungry for nothing but knowledge and revenge.
On my way back to the bed, I call to Dalsigre and sing, “
Torna, deh torna, o cara!
” and on the bed I sing, “
Torni volando a serenarmi il ciglio, che non ho piu consiglio, pace non ha il mio cor.
” Return, my beloved ⦠return flying to give peace to my eyes, for I have lost my reason, and my heart knows no peace.
Not true, but I like the mournful tunes. I am at peace.
And so, lying in bed, I turn off the music and turn back to the diaries.
I go through periods when there's a piece of my body missing. It's not a limb or an organ. It's something that doesn't exist but that I need back. Orgasms rip me apart. They put me back together. But I don't want to have them alone. I need someone to watch me.
Tonight there were 2 of them.
Ron I've been with before.
Ron talked me into this. He said, “I want my friend to see you.”
“See me what?”
I knew what he meant. But Ron didn't know how to say it. Men are not good with words.
“I told him you don't fuck,” he said.
“What else?”
“I told him he'll have to get himself off.”
“And?”
“He's game.”
I've never done this before. I've thought about it. When you can't find 1 man it's perfectly natural to think of more than 1. I've pictured them over me and under me, top and bottom, front and back. I've thought about the tips of their dicks meeting somewhere inside me. After that they have a lifetime bond. They go off and leave me alone.
I was a little nervous. 1 man is usually no trouble. But I was worried that 2 would feed off each other.
I should have known better. They were docile. Ron was possessive, first of all. He didn't even tell me the other man's name. So I had to ask. “Stan.” “Clara.” Ron had kept that to himself too.
He also tried to orchestrate. “Go ahead, Clara. Show him.” “Watch this, Stan. Watch what she does.”
I started on myself. My eyes were closed. Someone I could not see was making love to me.
“No, don't touch her!” It was so sweet. Ron was my protector now. I came without opening my eyes.
“Your turn.”
It was too late for poor Stan. He'd come just watching me. Listening to me. I was sorry I hadn't seen it.
We got to watch Ron labor over himself. He seemed very
self-conscious, which he'd learned not to be when he was alone with me. But Stan made him nervous.
“Please,” he said to me. He knew better than that. I wouldn't touch him.
“Close your eyes,” he said to Stan.
Men are so unevolved. Each one exists in his own little world. They see nothing.
Stan actually obeyed.
So there they were, the 2 of them with their eyes closed. While I watched them both.
It was raining when we got out of the concert tonight. There weren't any cabs. So we walked down Lexington and there still weren't any cabs and I said let's take a subway. Johnny said the rain wasn't going to last, “Let's go in here.” He didn't wait for me to agree. He pushed through the doors of HMV, which is not like him, he's usually such a gentleman. “I'm going downstairs,” he said. “Want to come or ⦔ The ground floor made him very uncomfortable. I've gotten him to listen to some pop music, but when he's in that part of a record store he gets nervous. The names of all the artists make him squint and scowl. “I'm not letting you out of my sight,” I said. So I followed him downstairs. His hair was wet and dripping on his collar. But he doesn't own a hat or an umbrella. He's always hoping he'll never have to leave the loft again.
Even though I went with him downstairs he still took almost an hour. I can never figure out how he does it. He rushes from one part of the room to another to another to another. He flips through discs and either talks to himself or sings to himself and then suddenly leaves and dances over to another bin and flips through those discs. He looks like a bee
in a field of flowers. He doesn't go alphabetically by composer. Or by artist. He doesn't stay at new releases. Maybe he hears music in his head and then goes to look for it. Maybe he thinks of a piece of music and goes to see if they have a particular recording of it. All I know is I love to watch him. Even if not for a whole hour. I particularly like it when he stops in his tracks and listens to something they're playing over the speakers in the room. He stands there stock still. Frozen in the middle of an aisle. I get to stare at him in public. I get to see him in ecstasy from across a room.
Tonight he ran up an aisle to me waving a jewelbox practically over his head. “Look!” he said. “Clara!” he said. “Das Marienleben!” he said.
“Buy it and let's go.”
“Glenn Gould!” he said. “Hindemith!” he said.
“I hope it's better than those sonatas.”
He stopped waving the jewelbox. “You don't like the sonatas?”
“It's not me. It's my ears.”
He didn't laugh. He just said, “Maybe you'll like this more. Roxlana Roslak is the singer.”
“Somebody sings?”
Somebody sings for sure. It's been playing ever since we got home, and I have to say I really don't think the Virgin Mary would want to get up and sing these songs.
So it was still raining when we left HMV. Johnny's hair got wet again and dripped again, but he still stood out there waving for a cab. He kept dashing from one corner to another. He'd stand on Lexington. He'd stand on 86th. No cab.
“Don't be afraid.”
“But I've never taken the subway. You know that.”
“There were a lot of things you hadn't done before you met me.”
“Not as dangerous as this.”
We waited on the local track. Going down to the express level would have been just too cruel.
The 6 came and we got on. The windows were fogged up from the rain. There were puddles on the floor. Johnny had hold of my hand and was practically pulling me into a seat. But I wouldn't let him. There was a puddle on the seat too. He couldn't understand it. “Does the rain come right through the surface of the earth?” “No. The train runs outside before it goes underground.” “Then they shouldn't call it the subway.”
I looked down to the far end of the car. “The seats look dry down there.” “Let's just stand here,” he said.
So we stood there. The doors were closed but the train took a while to move. When it finally did, Johnny took off in the opposite direction. I grabbed his wet sleeve and pulled him back to me. “You have to hold on,” I told him. I pushed his hand up to one of the metal straps. I watched it close over it. With hands like those, I thought, we're safe.
“Who are all these people?” Johnny hollered. He was looking around. Every time he caught someone's eyes, they looked down.
“How should I know who they are. Don't stare at them.”
“But I could feel them staring at me.”
“Maybe that's because we're the only people standing in the whole car.”
“What did you say?” He leaned down to bring his ear to my mouth.
“Nothing.”
“I still can't hear you. It's incredibly noisy in here.”
“It's the subway.”
But he only shook his head. How come I could hear him and he couldn't hear me.
“I don't like it,” he said.
He seemed relieved when we pulled into 77th Street. “Is that it?”
“That's only one stop, Johnny.”
“Let's get a cab,” he said, but by that time the doors had closed and we were on our way.
I could hear him start to sing as the train sped up. Not words. Just music. Something we'd heard at the concert. The faster the train went and the more noise it made, the louder Johnny sang.
I was worried he would keep singing when we stopped in the next station but his voice dropped into a hum.
“Is that the Haydn?” I asked him.
“The Schubert.” He started to sing it again as the train pulled out. But now he sang it so loudly I knew everyone could hear it. People sitting near us got up and moved to the other end of the car. At 59th, people who got on the train didn't sit near us because they could hear him humming. By the time we were pulling into 42nd we were completely alone in our half of the car. He drove the last person away by singing so loudly that he drowned out the screech of the wheels on the curve into Grand Central. And that's the way we rode all the way down to our stop.
We walked home from the station through the rain. “You can stop singing now,” I said. “You're safe.”
“But it's such a beautiful piece.”
“I recognize it from The Hunger,” I told him.
“What's The Hunger?”
“It's a movie. Starring Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve. They're lovers. And vampires.”
“Vanessa and Virginia. They had that look. And the Schubert was used?”
“I didn't know what it was until tonight. But I did remember it. It was inside me this whole time.”
“I don't care for movies.”
“I know.”
“But I did see a movie once with another French actress. Jeanne Moreau. I'll never forget it. She had sex in a rowboat while the first Brahms sextet was playing. I'd never heard it before. It was incredible.”
“How was the sex?”
“I closed my eyes.”
I stopped him to give him a hug. We were both soaked through. The rain had flattened his thick hair.
When we got home we stripped and dried each other off with towels. One thing led to another. We made love to Das Marienleben but even that couldn't stop us. In the middle of it he said, “Admit it.” “Ok, we'll never go on the subway again.” “Not that. Admit you couldn't stop thinking about Sharon Robinson and Jaime Laredo making love.” “You read my mind,” I said.
It's amazing, but every boy I had there, every single one, said just the way Kevin did “What about your parents?” I mean, the door was closed. What's the problem. Not that my parents were ever home in the afternoon. And not that I would have done it if they were. Because then they would have known. And I didn't want them to know. Not because I thought it was wrong. But because it was private. This was for me to do. This was me becoming me. This was innocent. I was innocent.
A man comes into the shop. He says, “What can you tell me
about your quilts?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
He's disgusted. “If I ran my business the way you run yours, I'd be out of business.”
“If you were out of business then you wouldn't be in here telling me how to run mine.”
“How's that?”
“You wouldn't be able to afford a quilt.”
“What makes you think I'm going to buy one? You won't even tell me about them.”
“That's right. I won't.”
“Now I know why stores open and close on this street before the ink's even dry on the lease.”
“Do you see one that appeals to you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“A quilt.”
“That appeals to me?”
“Yes, a quilt that appeals to you.”
“How would I know?”
“Look around.”
I go back to my paperwork.
“What about this one?” He points.
“That's a pieced quilt. Cotton. It has 48 white blocks. As you can see, 24 of them have red quarter circles in the corners and the other 24 have red pinwheels in the middle. When the blocks are pieced together they give you that wandering design. That's why it's called Drunkard's Path. It was made in Missouri during the Depression.”
“And that one.” He points.
“That's a Cape Cod Bridal quilt. It's much olderâearly 19th century. I see you like red on white. Those are appliqued
oak leaves. Oak leaves represent longevity, at least when they're on bridal quilts. Are you married?”
“Was.”
“Then don't buy this one.”
“But that's the one I like.”
“It doesn't speak your language, sir.”
“You mean you won't sell it to me?”
“Right.”
“And that Drunkard's Path does?”
“Does what?”
“Speaks my language?”
“I wouldn't know.”
“Will you sell the Drunkard's Path to me?”
“Of course.”
He throws his gold card down on my desk.
“I don't understand you,” he says.
“Why should you.”
He ignores that. “When I came in here you refused to tell me anything about your quilts.”
“Of course.”
“But then you ⦔
“You have to be specific.”
He signs. He leaves.
“Close call,” I say to the Cape Cod Bridal.
I was sitting here with nothing to say when I noticed the Crescent Moon cover I put on this book and thought about how it symbolizes virginity.
I love being a virgin. Almost as much as I love sex.
I'm not going to fuck anybody until it's my husband. And I'm not going to marry anybody until I find someone I can
trust my secrets to.
It's probably too late for me. I'm 21 years old. I have a bunch of quilts. I'd love to get more and sell them and get more and sell them. I'd love to have them pass through my hands. Every beautiful quilt ever made. But I don't want to make one myself. I have no desire to do that. Even if I did, it's probably too late for me.