On a dull March day in 1925 Mam and I stood at the dock waiting for Diccon to sail into New York Harbor. I was impatient for him to see me. I was eighteen, nothing like the child he had seen last. I was still short, but I had my new patent heels that I wore with everything no matter what, even my painting overalls. Just as Mam had promised, my baby fat had disappeared. And I had breasts—rather nice ones, I thought. I’d studied the breasts of lots and lots of nude models of all ages, some nothing more than little points, some large and heavy flopping down low, some—on the young women—sat on thin chests like little domes or circles of armor. Mine were more . . . Courbet-ish. When I’d seen Courbet’s Nude Woman with a Dog I’d thought, Hers look like mine.
Over and over, I’d imagined Diccon’s look of surprise. Pamela, how beautiful you’ve become! A young woman now!
How ridiculous, those flights of fancy. I feel my face getting red even now.
What actually happened is this: Diccon hardly greeted me at all. He looked flustered. He was uncharacteristically distant.
“Pamela! You . . . I almost didn’t recognize you . . . but I suppose, yes . . . there you are!” And finally, reluctantly, he gave me a hug.
I suppose I’d given him a severe shock. I was hardly the little girl he remembered.
But he was here now, that was the important thing. Now I had plenty of time to show him how very, very different I was.
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Above Daddy’s antiquarian bookstore on West Eighth Street was a tiny garret, with just enough room for a table and chair. Daddy offered it to Diccon to write in, to be alone. At first Diccon was immensely pleased, but he soon found he shared the space with an army of winged ants, a vast column of perpetual motion running from the baseboards up around the window casement. He realized that he simply couldn’t work in the stifling, infested room.
Mam had her own writing room in our new place on Grove Street, so her old space in my studio was available. I told Diccon he could work there. He was hesitant; he said he thought he’d be a bother. I said he was being ridiculous, that he might as well have a light-filled space to work in, and, as far as I knew, there were no hordes of strange insects to worry him. And, for heaven’s sake, there was more than enough space for the two of us.
Diccon and I never did bother each other in the slightest. That was one area in which we were always in perfect accord—we were equally intent in our work.
Diccon was writing a novel. It was concerned with childhood, he said, but he was quite vague about it. Oh, it’s about some children in Jamaica who end up on a pirate ship. . . .
I thought I saw many signs of Diccon’s affection. I convinced myself I did. The lingering, impish smile he always gave me when I handed him his tea, his incessant interest in my art, his teasing sobriquets. Pammikins, Pammy-pie, Little Miss Genius. Often, he commented on my eyes, how they changed color, gray to blue to lavender.
“There—they’ve done it again—they’re almost gray now. . . . Now look—I think I see a bit of violet—remarkable!” He embarrassed me yet made me feel pretty at the same time.
Diccon told many tales of Nancy Stallibrass and her parents. I couldn’t help but be amused whenever he described his tribulations with the Stallibrass family, and laughed to the point of tears at his merciless imitations of the haughty Philippa. He talked of Nancy’s sensitivity, her poetry. But he never talked of love. I was sure that Diccon, now back in the heart of our family, was realizing how wrongheaded it was to think of a future as part of the Stallibrass family. They weren’t his sort at all. It would be horrible. And it was no good having two poets marry.
But an artist and a writer, that would be quite different.
He does not love her, I told myself. He cannot.
I saw him posting letters to Nancy. One of them, surely, would tell her that they must break it off. That he realized he’d been in love with me all along. I almost began to feel sorry for Nancy.
Still, I wanted—desperately needed—proof of his love.
pamela
For the month of April, Daddy rented a rustic, rather shabby house in the Catskills. Diccon went along with us, and set himself up nearby in a small cabin. He buried himself away to write. We didn’t see too much of him. I never found a moment to be alone with him at all. Why couldn’t he make time to see us once in a while? It was horribly frustrating. Whenever he did show up, he always said he was sorry to be so absent. But I’m writing furiously now . . . can’t stop. . . .
I knew all about the artistic temperament, the need for peace and quiet and all that, but I had to do something. Time was running out.
I walked over to his cabin one day. I knew he wanted to be alone, but . . . he couldn’t write all the time, he just couldn’t. Perhaps he’d like to go for a walk, or for a swim in the river.
“Diccon!” I called out as I approached the cabin, not wanting to startle him. I knocked on the door. “Diccon!” Pushing the door open a bit, I called his name again, more as a question. “Diccon . . . ?” The cabin was still, empty. Fishing, I thought, he must be fishing. I could find him by the river. I turned to leave, but then my eye fell on his writing desk. His fountain pen lay across a sheet of paper. Curiosity pulled me across the room. It was wrong, I knew. I shouldn’t have been there at all. Perhaps I thought if I knew a bit more about his book, I could talk to him and . . . no, there was no justification for what I did. I was spying, there’s no other word for it. I wanted to know Diccon’s secrets. And what I found burned itself deep into my consciousness. Diccon had not been working on his book. Before he capped his pen and pushed his chair back that morning, he’d just finished a letter. There was his signature on the final page. I read the last sentence.
Darling, darling, DARLING, I love you so I feel it will burst out of me suddenly like a thunderclap, & leave my body all cracked up on the grass.
If I read more I have no recollection. I may have read those words once or a hundred times, I don’t know. I may have stood there one minute or one hour.
I walked outside in a trance. Diccon’s words pounded round and round in my head. I love you so. . . . Burst out of me like a thunderclap . . . Leave my body all cracked up on the grass. Oh God, why did I have to read that letter? Did he love that Nancy so very much?
It was too painful to think of, it made me dizzy. Helpless, nonsensical thoughts crowded my brain, jamming up until I had no thought at all, just a sort of buzzing.
Then, a strange thing happened. A thought took hold, breaking through the logjam in my mind. Who, really, was this “darling” person? Well, perhaps it wasn’t Nancy at all. Diccon hadn’t said Nancy, I love you so. No, just “darling, darling, darling.” Darling could be anyone, couldn’t it? It could be me. Perhaps he was writing what he was too afraid, too shy, to say. I began to believe it could be true. After all, what he’d written was exactly the way I felt about him. He must have known that. The longer I considered it the more I believed it had to be me he was writing to, and if I never got the letter it would only mean he hadn’t the courage to send it. Didn’t we all put our deepest feelings down on paper, then later crumple up our thoughts and toss them away?
I was ecstatic. Diccon’s words belonged to me. He felt his love for me like a thunderclap!
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