I remained silent as we walked. Pamela looked at me now and again with a sort of half smile that tried to be cheery. It was strange for me to be so quiet, and I knew it was upsetting her. But I wasn’t ready to talk, wasn’t sure what it was I wanted to say. I kept her arm linked in mine, held her close. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t have the words, I needed just to keep walking, to get far away from the confines of our house. Away from Francesco.
We passed a young girl bending over in the shadows of an alcove, pulling a flask out of her shiny red boot. Farther south, mothers sat on the front stoops of tenements, drawing their shawls close, gossiping. A streetlight lit up a banquet of vegetables, a burst of rich color. Shiny red peppers, green-blue broccoli, orange-tipped squash blossoms. On Carmine Street a hurdy-gurdy man played his barrel organ music. A little red-capped monkey clapped his hands and held out a tin cup. Neighborhood children hopped and skipped and twirled. Pamela and I stopped, enchanted despite ourselves by this impromptu hurdy-gurdy ballet.
I began to feel I could breathe again.
I tried to collect my thoughts.
What will be the result of this premature exploiting. . . .
The reporter from the Telegram had hit a very tender nerve. The tenderest nerve. But it would not do to give in to the feelings his words aroused in me. I had made a pact with myself. Now I would walk through these feelings, exorcise them. I needed to be quick about it, not brood, as much for Pamela’s sake as for my own. I knew how it must weigh on her, the tension between her parents. She’d be certain that it was all her fault, that she was to blame.
The silence became too much for her.
“Oh, Mam, you mustn’t worry . . . you know . . . that’s just Daddy. It doesn’t make any difference, really it doesn’t.” It’s too late, anyway, is what she meant. “I’m quite used to everything, you know, we can’t change . . . I mean, I’ll just keep on painting and drawing, it’s not as if I can stop that. I suppose it’s best if Daddy handles the rest. Like he always has. After all, he is my manager—and he always will be, I guess. . . .” She laughed nervously.
Did Pamela wish that things were different? Did she wish that her father had never brought her drawings to the gallery in Turin? Did she regret her fame, or did it make her happy? She never seemed affected by it, not that I could tell.
And what did I wish? It was all quite beyond me on that bitter March evening.
In the end, I saw it didn’t matter. We couldn’t address the real issue because we both knew there was no way to fix it.
Everyone knows you can’t go back in time.
We crossed Sixth Avenue and wound our way through the warren of streets—Cornelia to Bleecker to Barrow. We stopped just outside the brightly lit window of Levy’s butcher shop. A row of skinned rabbits hung by their feet, long and glowing pink. I tried not to look.
“Pamela.” I held her away from me, my arms rigid, the way I always had when she was small and she’d done something wrong and I wanted her to know that what I was about to say was quite serious, indeed.
“Pamela . . . you know that this . . . this craziness won’t last forever? I mean, you know that what’s happening now is not the important thing . . . ? The important thing is that you are an artist no matter what newspapers ever may say, good or bad. . . .”
“I know, Mam . . . I know.”
And . . . well, to this day I believe she did truly know. She had always understood, from the beginning. She’d known in Turin when I hadn’t wanted her pictures in the exhibition. She had learned it all these years from bits of overheard conversation, seen it from my gestures and quick looks. Pamela would always draw and paint. She would never be anything but an artist. She would be quite content when there was no “craziness” at all.
“Daddy gets excited, but I don’t.”
I hesitated, looking at her carefully. She was all right, I thought. She’s not worried about herself, she’s only worried about me. And her father. She wants it to be fine again between us.
I gave her my best smile, the one that said, Don’t worry, everything’s all right now.
“Well . . . right, then. I’m glad, that’s good.”
I pushed open the shop door.
“Oh, Lord, I wish they wouldn’t put those poor little rabbits in the window, don’t you?”
pamela
Forever arrived at the end of June. Summer!
When I got off the train at Point Pleasant I looked around, almost expecting to see Diccon waiting there at the station. It was silly, but I couldn’t help it.
Cecil and Teddy were already there, waiting for us at Old House with Agnes and her two-year-old son, Shane. Gene, however, was missing. The ever-elusive playwright was staying in the city to work. Cecil confided to us that she saw little of her son-inlaw. She hadn’t even met him until almost a year after the wedding. Cecil clearly had many reservations about the man her daughter had chosen. He can be funny as hell, and charming, but only when he drinks and he drinks too damned much. And I’m not too sure I want to know how he treats her when no one’s around. . . . I’ll never hear a word from Agnes, though, she thinks the man walks on water. Cecil would shake her head over Gene—what could she do?
I thought it must be terrible to have a daughter married to a man you didn’t care for, who was drunk half the time. As I listened to Cecil prattling on I couldn’t help thinking, How happy Mam will be with Diccon for a son-in-law. It would be such a natural thing. He was part of the family already.
Old House was set on a hill. It was a three-story farmhouse, airy, with large, sparsely furnished rooms. Nothing matched. Chairs didn’t go with tables, bureaus didn’t go with beds. It’s a summer place, a camp, I can hear Cecil saying.
The strangest thing in the house was the hand. Whenever we referred to “the hand” we’d look about and speak in low, mysterious voices as if it were some dreadfully scary thing. From the inside of the fireplace in the living room, a very real-looking hand seemed to be reaching out, holding up the brick arch. Once white, it was now yellowed by smoke. It was, in fact, Cecil’s hand—an artist friend had made a plaster cast and presented it to her. Unsure what to do with the appendage, Cecil had, on a whim, cemented it to the fireplace.
I remembered that hand. From long ago. How it had frightened me.
There were other things. Little bits of memory floated back.
The yellow wooden knobs on the kitchen cabinets, the creaking exactly halfway up the back stairs, the stuffed owl on top of the bookcase. And, on the third floor, my bedroom. It faced the front of the house, looking towards the sea. I remembered the slanted wall, the eaves.
I remembered the feeling of loneliness.
margery
Francesco and I made our peace. Late that night, in bed, Francesco held me and murmured into the dark, “I am very sorry, Margery. Very, very sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking . . . well, I was not thinking at all . . . you know how I am.”
“I know how you are.”
“It’s all right then?” he said, after a while.
I was silent, but I didn’t move away from him.