James Salter - All That Is

The power of the novel in the nation’s culture had weakened. It had happened gradually. It was something everyone recognized and ignored. All went on exactly as before, that was the beauty of it. The glory had faded but fresh faces kept appearing, wanting to be part of it, to be in publishing which had retained a suggestion of elegance like a pair of beautiful, bone-shined shoes owned by a bankrupt man. Those who had been in it for some years, he and Glenda and the others, were like nails driven long ago into a tree that then grew around them. They were part of it by now, embedded.

To make the house more comfortable he rearranged the furniture, moved the table and brought a leather chair from the city. He put some books, a bottle of whiskey, and some nice glasses on the table. He also brought up a pair of framed Edward Weston photographs, one of them of Charis, Weston’s legendary model and companion. He unfastened and stored in a closet the sets of little slatted shutters that were inside the windows and instead hung some white muslin curtains that admitted more light.

In the mornings he had a soft-boiled egg. He put the egg in a pan of cold water and when the water came to a boil it was done. Carefully tapping around it with a knife, he removed the top, put in a bit of butter and some salt and ate the soft white and warm, runny yolk with a spoon. Afterwards for an hour or so he read the newspaper he’d brought up with him before sitting down with a manuscript. His life seemed simpler and in this bare house almost penitent. The next week he brought up a Navajo rug that had been in the closet and felt a little more at home.

Among the first people he met in Tivoli were a professor, Russell Cutler, and his wife, Claire, an avid woman with a slight lisp. “Between ourselves,” she would say, slightly thickening it. Cutler had written scholarly books but was now working on a detective novel, not without difficulty. His wife read every page and crossed out things she disapproved of or considered sexist. She was long-necked with long hands and the sari slipping from her shoulder the night Bowman came to dinner. There was a large dining table covered with a dark green, patterned cloth, and she had written out the menu and gone to the trouble of having two different wines and two fruit tarts for dessert. Her friend Katherine, with a striking feline face, had been invited, too, and busied herself helping the hostess. At the table she seemed not so much unwilling to speak as attentive—almost as if waiting for a tidbit—to anything Bowman might say.

“You’re an editor, Claire says,” she ventured finally.

“Yes.”

“A book editor?”

“Yes, I edit books.”

“That must be a wonderful life.”

“Yes and no. What do you do?”

“Oh, I’m just a secretary here, at Bard. But I love New York. I go to New York every chance I get.”

She had landed at Bard somehow. She had come to New York, which was what she had always wanted to do, after a divorce but hadn’t been able to find a job she liked. She stayed with a friend, a French woman who was a painter and had said to her, if you come to New York, you must stay with me, but when Katherine moved in, said she would have to charge her some rent.

“Yes, of course,” Katherine had said.

It was what she said to everything. In Houston they had come to take away the furniture. Yes. Of course. She had an aristocratic disposition, she dismissed misfortune. She was a model secretary, nicely dressed, helpful, and efficient. It was her looks and the possibilities they suggested. She loved gossip. She liked to mimic. She remembered everything. Though she seemed to be a woman whose main interests were clothes and parties, her real passion was books. She loved books—no one ever loved them more. She read two or three a week. She would come home from a bookshop with a bag of them and start reading one while taking off her shoes. She would still be reading when Deborah, the girl she shared a house with, came home late after orchestra practice. Her own life she treated as a tragicomedy, but writing she treated seriously. The dream she concealed was to become a writer, but she avoided ever saying anything about that.

The next morning in Germantown in the little grocery Bowman saw her standing in one of the narrow aisles. He almost didn’t recognize her. She looked younger. He said hello.

“That was a nice evening at the Cutlers’,” he said. “Did you enjoy it?”

“Oh, yes. You were amazing.”

“Was I? I didn’t realize that. What are you shopping for?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even make a list,” she apologized. “Such a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“It feels like summer.”

“I don’t really have much planned. Are you doing anything? Let’s have lunch.”

“Oh, yes!” she cried. “Where shall we go?”

There were only a couple of choices, and in the end they went to Red Hook, to the diner. Only a few people were there. They sat in a booth. She drew in her cheeks as she read the menu, a kind of sophisticated pose.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

At the same time he sensed that she was more at ease.

“I’m going to have the corned beef hash,” he said. “How do you happen to know the Cutlers?”

“Oh, Claire. I met her at a lecture. Three professors were explaining the poems of Wallace Stevens. I asked her afterwards if she understood any of it. Between ourselves, she said, hardly a word.”

“Yes, between ourselves. What about her husband?”

“Russell? He knows nothing about anything. He likes to make his own wine.”

“Is that what we were drinking?”

“Oh, no. His wine is undrinkable. You spit it out.”

“Where are you from, Katherine?”

“Oh, a town in Oklahoma you’ve never heard of. Hugo.”

“You grew up there?”

“Well, yes,” she said, “but I left the day I graduated from high school and went to the city, and I had a little accident.”

“What was that?”

“I got married. I was eighteen and I just married the first man I met. He was good-looking but he turned out to be a drug addict, a horrible drug addict. I didn’t realize it, of course, being eighteen, but that’s what happened. He lost all his money. He had loads of money from his father. We lived in a huge house and had to move out of it. We had four in help plus the gardener, who slept in the garage.”

It sounded as if she were making it up, at least parts of it, but he decided to believe it.

“Oh, my, they were trouble,” she said. “The maid’s boyfriend was a big Mexican who drove his pickup to the back door and they would load it with meat from the freezer. I was afraid of him. Whenever I came back and saw the truck I would turn around and drive off for at least half an hour. I didn’t want to catch them. It was terrible. The only one I liked was the housekeeper, who ran off to Florida and called one day from a shopping center to say they were down to eight dollars and her daughter had entered the Miss Florida contest. If I would just send them some money she promised to pay it back.”

She was aware of her good looks as she performed, which is what it was. She paused.

“Are you married?” she asked casually.

“Oh, a long time ago. We’ve been divorced for years.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened, really. I mean, that’s from my point of view. She probably had some grievances.”

“What did she do?” Katherine asked.

“Do you mean work? She didn’t work. She didn’t read, that was one thing.”

“Don’t you just wonder at people like that? What was her name?”

“Her name was Vivian.”

“Vivian!”

“Vivian Amussen. Very good-looking.”

She felt a little stab of unhappiness, even jealousy. It was just automatic.