Alison Lurie: Truth and Consequences

“Yes, now I am,” Delia admitted, putting one soft hand on his arm and speaking low and intensely. “But that could end anytime. Suppose suddenly I couldn’t write anymore. The world forgets so fast; it always wants something new. Everyone knows how it goes. You don’t write anything, but you still get a little grant or a little prize here and there, and then pretty soon you’ve had most of the grants and prizes. You try to make it on readings, but they come less and less often. Soon you’re one of those sad former writers you meet at art colonies, living from one residency to another. Then you wake up one morning and you can’t even get into a colony, you’re old and ugly and poor and mostly forgotten. All you have is a leaky log cabin in the mountains and a lot of used clothes and dead manuscripts. I couldn’t bear that. I had to do something.”

“But—Wally Hersh—he’s—” Alan swallowed the angry words. He did not believe that Delia could ever be old and ugly and forgotten, but he believed in her irrational fear of this future.

“He’s very sweet, really.” She smiled, sweetly, as if to demonstrate.

“Sweet.” Alan tried but failed to say this word neutrally.

“He loves artists and writers. When I took him to the Academy lunch last month and he met John Updike and Dick Wilbur he was really happy. His favorite course in college was English literature.”

“So?” He felt rage rising in him.

“You don’t understand,” Delia almost wailed. “It’s different for you, you can always teach and support yourself. And I can’t—I’ve tried, but it destroys me, it destroys my work. You have tenure and health benefits and retirement—you’re safe.”

“And now you’re safe too,” Alan said, half in sympathy, half in scorn.

“Yes. You don’t know, it’s such a relief. It’s as if, all my life, I’d been holding my breath, dreading the mail because I know it will be full of bills, maxing out credit cards, giving readings in awful places when I was coming down with the flu, being charming to awful people to get them to help me, fighting through migraines, lying sick as a cow in motels—” She gave a great sigh, then a wonderful smile. “But now I don’t have to do any of that. When you have enough money, you can hire people to do whatever you need done, and you don’t have to pay them in kisses and compliments—or if you do, it’s a bonus for them.”

“You have to pay Wally Hersh, though,” Alan said flatly, fighting a crazy impulse to grab her and crush her elaborate white frills. “But I suppose it saves time, like consolidating all your debts with a single credit card company.”

“No. It’s more like owning the company.” Delia did not obviously take offense, but she withdrew her hand and took a step away. “It’s very beautiful, your tower,” she said. “Even more than I thought it would be when Jacky showed me the drawings.”

“Thank you,” he said repressively, refusing to express pleasure.

“Can you get up to the top?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “There’s stairs inside.”

“Wonderful.” She started toward the arched stone entrance, and Alan, after a moment, picked up his cane and followed, drawn by both antagonism and passion. Painfully he climbed the stone steps behind a flurry of white gauze and bare pale rosy legs in high-heeled silver sandals.

“Oh, it’s nice up here. There’s a lovely view.”

“Yeah, that was the idea.” Alan followed her gaze across Long Island Sound, now a sheet of rippled gray silk near the shore, touched with ultramarine farther out. Then he looked back to where Delia stood, where the crenellated wall had been deliberately designed and built to look broken away. Suppose I pushed her now, suppose she fell, would she die? he thought. No, probably not, because of the thick bushes just below, sumac and blackberry and wild rose—but she might be injured, or at least badly scratched—

“Jacky says you’re doing awfully well with your art,” Delia remarked. “He showed me the piece in the Times. And he says you’ve got more commissions after this one.”

“Yeah. There’s a collector in New Jersey who has a sculpture park; I’m building something for him next month. And there’s supposed to be another commission, somewhere in Westchester. Only it’s not certain—Jacky won’t even tell me the guy’s name.”

“Yes. The mystery client.” Delia smiled. “It’s Wally. He wants the ruined Temple of Venus that was in the group show last year.”

“Well, he can’t have it,” Alan said, feeling a surge of rage and losing his cool. “That stupid rich bastard.” He swallowed hard, fighting the urge to strike out. “He’s bought you, and now he wants to buy me.”

“Oh, darling. Don’t say that,” Delia wailed. “It’s my place too. It’s for me, really; I’ve been dreaming about it for months.”

“A ruined Temple of Venus,” Alan growled. “Well, that’s fucking appropriate.” He turned away and began slowly and painfully to descend the stone steps, with Delia following close behind.

“It doesn’t have to be very ruined,” she cried, clutching on to his arm to stop him. “Just a little. And it could be so beautiful, like in your drawing, with the columns and the stone garlands of flowers and fruit, and the faded frescoes—it would be a big project, it could take months to build. And you’d be there, and I’d be there. . . .” She took another step down and moved toward him, then against him. For the first time since December he felt the warm, soft weight of her; he saw, in the shadows of the circular stair, her pale face turned to his.

“Oh, my dear,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you so much.”

What the fuck am I doing? Alan thought. How can I trust this bitch, how can I love her? She betrayed Henry Hull, then she betrayed me, and now she’s betraying Wally Hersh. But the pull was too strong, and he moved closer.

“You could build it in September,” Delia murmured when they paused for breath. “Wally has to be in Hong Kong then, I’ll be all alone—but of course you’ll have to come to Rye much sooner, to look at the site. There’s a little pond that might be just right—”

“I didn’t say I would do it,” Alan said, crushing Delia’s elaborate tiered skirts against the rough stone of the staircase.

“But you will, won’t you?” She kissed him again, lightly and warmly, then swayed back. “And then, you know your Attic Window, that’s going to be on the cover of my new book? I want you to build it by my cabin in North Carolina, just where the mountain falls away, so that what you see through the window is all sky and distant hills.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“And I suppose then you’ll want another piece for Wally Hersh’s place in Palm Beach,” he said as coolly as he could manage.

“No. I don’t like Palm Beach. And Wally’s house is really awful, all pink and green Cuban tiles and stucco arches and chandeliers and ugly fountains. My spirits would never come there, not in a thousand years. I’m going to persuade Wally to sell it and move to Key West. That’ll be much more welcoming for them.”

“Really.” Alan descended the last few steps to the ground floor of the tower, trying to get a grip on himself, and stepped outside. “According to what I read, Key West is overrun with homeless chickens and feral six-toed cats, and drugs, and drunken writers and crazy motorcyclists, and the local government is completely corrupt,” he said.

“Yes, doesn’t it sound wonderful?” Delia laughed. “I’m going to be so happy there. Even happier than Henry and Jane.” She paused in the natural frame of the tower’s archway, whose gray stone had begun to turn a faint gold in the light of the declining sun.