Alison Lurie - Truth and Consequences

One important change was that Jane now had no understanding or appreciation of his work. She had been very supportive and proud of his books on architecture, which always included a warm acknowledgment of her encouragement and help (research, typing, editing). His longest and most serious book, on eighteenth-century American vernacular architecture, was dedicated to her. At first Alan had thought that maybe she felt left out of his new projects, for which her assistance was not necessary. But it was more than that.

“You don’t really like them, do you?” he had asked last week, indicating the new drawings spread out on his drafting table at the Center.

“It’s not that, exactly,” his wife said, flatly honest as always, but obviously straining to be positive or at least polite. “Probably I just don’t understand. I mean, you draw so beautifully—but I don’t know . . . All these doors and windows, they’re so kind of strange and empty. Scary, even. Maybe if there were people in the rooms . . .”

“But that’s part of the point, that there’s no one,” Alan had tried to explain. “They’re the ghosts of rooms. Memories of rooms.” But Jane’s expression had not altered, and for a moment a cold heavy surge of self-doubt had drenched him, like a storm-weather wave full of seaweed and broken shells.

He needed to see Delia, Alan realized, to hear her tell him again that his work was good. But on Monday she hadn’t come in to the Center; according to Susie, she was at home with a bad migraine. On Tuesday she was still absent, and that afternoon, against his better judgment, Alan had called her house.

“Yeah?” It was the voice of Delia’s husband, Henry Hull. . . . “No, she can’t come to the phone, she’s not well.” . . . “No, she doesn’t want to talk to you or anyone. Look, it would be better if you people at the Center would stop calling, all right? She’ll come in when she can.” Henry’s voice was harsh with irritation, even with active hostility. Did he guess what Alan and Delia meant to each other? Or could Jane have told him about the incident in Delia’s office?

Another cold flood of despondency had washed over Alan. But yesterday Delia, restored to health and more beautiful than ever in a new creamy lace shawl, had mopped up the flood. She had repeated her praise of his work and her desire for one of the drawings as a cover for her new book. Warmed by this, and by a half hour of pure pleasure, Alan had exclaimed impulsively that he wished that they could be together more often—always.

“Oh, my dear.” Delia smiled and made a small shooing gesture, as if waving invisible moths away. “I’d love that too. But you know it’s not possible. I need someone with no serious work of his own, someone who has time to take care of me. We both need that.”

“You mean you need Henry.” Alan felt a heartburn spurt of jealousy.

“Not necessarily.” She sighed softly, and fell silent. “There’s a time and place for everyone,” she said finally, “and I’ve begun to wonder if Henry’s right for me now. There’s so much sorrow and failure around him.” She shook her head slowly, causing her tangled curls to rise and subside. “It’s sad. He had a gift once, but he wouldn’t put it first, so he couldn’t hold on to it.”

Henry’s on his way out, thought Alan. And about time. He was never right for her: a dim, semi-employed Canadian, with an irritatingly ironic manner—a parasite on his beautiful, brilliant wife. “Yeah,” he agreed.

Delia gave a long sigh. “You have to put your gift first, always,” she said. “Because it’s the only thing that will last. You have to sacrifice everything for it, including yourself. You’ll be consumed soon enough anyhow, vanished into dust and smoke.”

“That’s true,” Alan said, remembering times in the last year and a half in which he had felt this disappearance imminent, even desirable. “There’s not that much time.”

“You know, if you’re a creative person, when you’re with someone who doesn’t really understand what you’re doing, gradually a kind of horrible vacuum develops. It sucks everything up eventually. Even your soul.”

Yes, it’s the same for me, he had thought. Jane believed in my books, but she doesn’t believe in what I’m doing now. She fears and dislikes it, really. “Jane doesn’t like my new drawings much,” he said. “Really she doesn’t like anything I’ve done lately.”

“That’s serious.” Delia had stopped smiling. She knew, she told him, how destructive it was to live with someone who didn’t believe in your work. “That’s how it was with my first husband,” she told Alan. “Whenever he talked about my writing it was like frogs croaking in a swamp. He tried to be neutral; he didn’t say much, but once you hear that croaking sound, the echoes of it are with you night and day, dragging you down and down into the mud. You have to snatch up everything and get away before it drives you mad.”

“You’re right,” Alan replied. Another vision had come to him, and when he was back in his own office he began a drawing. Its central feature was the big Victorian sofa in the room across the hall, its cushions holding the imprint of Delia’s body. Her lace shawl was thrown over the back next to the tall open window, and a book lay facedown on the carpet. The sculpture would be mostly in different shades of white and cream, but tinted here and there with a flush of rose-sepia. Sentimental? Yes, perhaps. But he would make it all the same, Alan thought now as he pulled into the snowy parking lot of the drugstore, for love, for Delia.

Twenty minutes later, as he left the store, his mood had darkened to match the weather. He drove to the Center—exceeding the speed limit—and, without stopping to hang his coat under the stairs or wait for the elevator, ascended directly and painfully to Delia’s office. For the first time in months the door was wide open. Delia, in a long pale-gray suede vest and embroidered gray silk skirt, stood gazing out the tall window into the pale-gray sky.

In an uneven, angry voice, he spoke her name.

“Oh, hello,” she murmured, turning.

Alan did not bother with a greeting. “I just saw Lily Unger in the drugstore. She says you’re leaving town forever this weekend.”

“Mm. Yes,” Delia admitted.

“You never told me.” His tone was harsh, accusing.

“I couldn’t.” She looked at him, smiling softly and regretfully. ‘I promised.”

“Promised whom?” Alan raised his voice.

She did not answer, only continued to smile.

“Promised what?” Now he was almost shouting.

“Not to make waves.” Delia made the gesture of waves with one hand. “Just to slip away, without causing anyone any trouble. I wanted so much to call you, but I was afraid.” She took a swaying step toward him.

“Afraid of what?”

“Everything. Everyone.” She came closer. How frail she looks today, almost ill, he thought suddenly. How wide and silver-pale her eyes are, how thick and dark her lashes. “Lily said, if I told anyone, they’d argue and threaten and try to stop me.”

“I wouldn’t—” Alan began, and fell silent, aware that this was what he had been about to do, in any way possible—that he would try even now.

“You don’t really have to leave,” he said, trying to speak calmly, convincingly.

“But I do.” She had reached his side, and gazed up at him, her rosy mouth half open as if for a passionate kiss. “You know how awful it’s been here for me, ever since my reading. I knew what was coming. I asked Henry to explain that there would probably be two or three hundred people. But they wouldn’t listen. Sometimes I think it was deliberate.”

“Yeah,” Alan agreed, realizing that “they” in this context meant Jane.