Lynne Tillman - Cast in Doubt

Perhaps my fascination with Smitty is another type of atavism. It may simply be boredom. It’s odd. I don’t consciously worry about men loving or accepting me. I know one did deeply and assume two or three others probably have. Of course I always hope there will be another one or two on the horizon. I have always had male friends, in any case. Yet I am, I think, more comfortable with women; I seek out their company and friendship. Occasionally I fear they won’t love me. Gwen does, I know. And Alicia. I know my mother did. But I rejected her when I was young. Perhaps I am punishing myself, even now. I didn’t visit her when she was in the hospital. I don’t know what possessed me not to fly home right away. I kept saying to myself it wasn’t time yet. Then one day I received a telephone call from my brother, who told me, rather self-righteously, that she had died. I suppose he wanted me to express my guilt to him, in that very moment, but I didn’t. Nor have I. Not at the funeral, not ever.

Famished and dry as a bone, I enter the restaurant. Some of the excited new tourists are also here. I ignore them, take my regular table in the rear of the terrace, and order white wine and light a cigarette. The wine is just cold enough; it sits dryly on my tongue, prolonging those vapors and bubbles of memory, champagne bubbles of memory.

Night is now falling, and the moon begins its ascent. The lights glow across the harbor, and one of the fishing boats is making ready to set sail. A slight wind lifts the pink tablecloths, and the water slaps more vigorously against the seawalls. What a strange idea, that night falls. Perhaps not. I muse and sip the cold wine. The moon does go down, the sun does rise. Christos brings me broiled fish-sardines caught this morning, I like small fish-and a salad, some bread and more wine, though I see Nectaria trying to stop him from offering me another bottle. The day has been shot to hell anyway, lost when earlier I broke my drinking rule.

Roger ambles over to the table, complaining about how the plumber didn’t come again today. It’s Saturday, I remind him. Roger also complains that he couldn’t get any writing done. He heard from his publisher yesterday. I don’t care, I want to say, but don’t, even though the wine has loosened me up. I stiffen instead, smile cryptically and hold myself more erect than usual, to fight the dreadful desire to blurt out something awful. He goes on jabbering. I ought to poke him in the eye or tell him what I think of his petty problems. His conservatism drives me mad. He would be terribly shocked were I to articulate what I really thought. We’ve had so many arguments over the years, the truth is, he must have an inkling, and not care a jot.

Roger and I have often argued about the terrible imbalance of wealth in our country, with Roger taking the position finally that the poor can shift. I think it is a good thing he is not in the States, though his views are as obnoxious here as they would be there. Poverty is all around us here too. Rich people, I once told him, become lawyers because they know how to defend themselves. He called me a class traitor. Very amusing really, as he is not from my class but wishes he were.

A privileged lad, I used to cavort on the streets of Manhattan and Boston at 4 A.M. when the police didn’t care what a crazy white boy from Harvard did as long as he didn’t get himself killed. He would never kill someone. That’s what they thought. But rich people do murder, they murder each other the way the poor do — perhaps not in such great numbers — and they make killings on the market that certainly cause great societal distress. Roger hates the flamboyant in me; he likes to imagine he is always in control — of himself, of the conversation and so on.

Roger suggests that we play chess later. I announce that I’m going home to work. He arches one eyebrow, as if to say, Oh, Horace, poof, you aren’t going to write anything, nothing of value in your current state or, for that matter, ever. He glances at Yannis, who’s sitting nearby, chewing his fingernails, which I’ve told him not to do. Roger is figuring, I can see it in his transparent blue eyes, how to steal Yannis away from me, because though he let Yannis go, or rather though Yannis quickly left him, Roger likes to steal my lovers. He’s done it before. My book, my Household Gods, I insist unsteadily, will be an important work. Roger stands up and flutters his eyelashes at me. Then he most ungraciously laughs and says, while patting me patronizingly on the back, Blow it out your asshole, Horace! Can you imagine?

The walk to Alicia’s apartment is sublime. It’s cool this afternoon and perhaps this means that fall is coming sooner rather than later. I hate thoughts like that. Let fall come when it will. Her house is perched atop a hill, is covered in purple flowers and has a few stone gargoyles shooting out from the roof. Little stones lodge between my toes as I walk up her path, making my entrance less elegant than I had wanted it to be. This is when I feel old, when in bending down to shake out my shoes, I tremble and need to hold on to the side of the front door. Alicia watches this without contempt, I think, and I quickly recover my balance, in all senses.

Paintings and drawings hang on most of the walls, though the room we sit in, a screened porch, is underdecorated, bare but for the two chairs and small round table on which is set a blue teapot, white cups and saucers, and pastries. Honeyed Greek dainties that eat into the enamel of one’s teeth. The view down the hill to the harbor is magnificent and Alicia gazes at it with the look of someone who has seen this, and it, all before. She owns the view, not because it’s hers — one doesn’t own views — but because she has incorporated it into her being. Today, because of something she’s done with her hair, I think, she reminds me of Maria Callas, were Callas an American of German and Polish descent, not Greek. Alicia’s mother was born and raised in the Polish countryside; and part of Alicia’s inheritance is a broad jaw, prominent nose, and square shoulders. She has always been a good friend to me, though there is a way in which she seems not to need anyone.

Perhaps this is because there is a Supreme Being for Alicia. She believes in God, but I’m not sure what kind of God, and all around her apartment are religious symbols from the major faiths, and probably from some of the minor ones, too. I can only think, because I think in terms of family and tradition, that Alicia must have had an early religious education from which she turned away — it is hard for me to believe her faith wouldn’t have been shaken at some time — and to which she returned with renewed fervor after a terrible event. The loss of the child I’ve already fantasized for her, the acceptance of great failure on her part, the death of a lover, the loss of her singing voice — something must have made her turn again to God. God is a repellent idea to me, and were Alicia not so spiritually ambiguous in effect, whatever her beliefs, I would not be so fond of her. I would not even take tea with her. But she is and I do, with pleasure.

She pours us tea, while asking the usual questions. How’s the work going? She loves my title, Household Gods, for reasons already given. But I’m sure she’d be disappointed or confused by the project were she to read it. No one ever has. The crime books I write go out under another name, and no one here reads them, I’m fairly certain. Alicia and Roger don’t consider it to be real writing, which bothers me but not very much since I too depreciate it. I am more than ambivalent about what I produce under the name Norman East. Now I’m not even sure why I chose that name. It may have had something to do with East Lynne or summers at Northeast Harbor, in Maine. In truth, I’ve forgotten.