I was furious with Diccon. I couldn’t bother being angry with Jane. I liked Jane, she’d always been quite nice to me, and she was married, after all. I was sure it was all Diccon’s idea to go riding, take up all of her time. But honestly, I couldn’t see why he spent all that time galloping around the countryside when he was supposed to be so busy writing.
Diccon wrote back, ignoring everything I’d written. His letter was jubilant. He’d been in a black mood for weeks, he said, unable to write the ending to his novel. Then he’d gone out for a ride and somersaulted off his horse, landing flat on his back. The jolt was what was needed, he said, for I rode back and straightway finished the story. All I required was a good shaking up. Which would go to prove that all books come from the liver.
I suppose I knew even at that moment that Diccon had no interest in me. Not in the way I wanted. He was only interested in his book. And riding. I knew it, but dismissed all such thoughts.
I shut myself in my studio and played Italian operas all day and night. Mostly La Traviata over and over. I curled up on the old Oriental rug and listened, over and over and over, to the high sweet notes of Amelita Galli-Curci singing “Sempre Libera.”
Sempre libera degg’io
Folleggiar di gioia in gioia
Vo’ che scorra il viver mio
Pei sentieri del piacer
Nasca il giorno, o il giorno muoia
Sempre lieta ne’ ritrovi
A diletti sempre nuovi
Dee volare il mio pensier.
I must always be free
To hurry from pleasure to pleasure
I want my life to pass
Along the path of delight.
At daybreak or at the end of the day,
Always happy, wherever I am,
My thoughts will ever fly
Towards new delights.
It was the only consolation I had.
margery
I’ve changed my mind.
I do think it would be good to let Pamela talk about whatever it is she wants to talk about, but I think I’ll postpone it, after all. I’m afraid I’m not up to it.
I’ll ask Francesco to talk to her. It all has to do with him, really, doesn’t it? She has answered to him all her life, perhaps now he can answer to her.
They are so very close. How different it’s been for Cecco and Pamela, their relationship with their father. With Cecco, it was always all so easy. Helping Franceso in the bookstore, fencing with him, discussing the papers he wrote when he was studying at Columbia. And Francesco liked to advise Cecco about his love life, not that Cecco paid any attention. But Pamela . . . it’s not that Francesco doesn’t love her beyond measure. But Pamela’s talent—it’s colored everything. She’s grown up needing his approval in a way that Cecco never has. Not that he isn’t happy to have Francesco’s approval—or mine—it’s just that he’s never seemed, really, to need either of us terribly.
But Pamela, always trying to please her father . . .
How vividly I remember the time—she was only five and Cecco was six—when Francesco got it into his head that they must memorize “The Host of the Air.” He does love his Yeats— even now, his battered old Wind Among the Reeds sits by his bedside. Still, it was a daunting task for a child, “The Host of the Air.” Eleven verses!
Pamela took on the assignment as a sacred duty. I went to check on her before I went to bed one night, and she’d fallen asleep with the torch shining beneath the sheets, Wind Among the Reeds by her side. And just a few days later she announced that she could recite the poem. We gathered in the parlor, and there she stood, so small in one of those rather shapeless linen dresses I used to make for her, and she chanted, quite perfectly, all eleven verses. I can hear her child’s voice now, speaking of the pain of love, not understanding a word of it.
Brava! Brava! Francesco called out, beaming and clapping.
Cecco had his turn weeks later. Even then, it took a good bit of cuing to get him through. It was clear he was miserable. Francesco just laughed.
At any rate, perhaps now Francesco can get Pamela through this, perhaps he can find a way to break down those barriers she puts up.
I’m not the one for that task.
pamela
I was miserable, but I was not the only one with a battered heart. Agnes was suffering, too. Gene wanted a divorce.
The reason was simple: he was in love with another woman. The beautiful stage actress, Carlotta Monterey. He and Carlotta had plans to leave for Europe soon. The quicker Agnes would agree to a divorce, Gene had told her, the better for everyone.
Unlike my agony, Agnes’s troubles were exposed for the world to see. Gene’s affair screamed out from the newsstands. Eugene O’Neill Deserts Wife. O’Neill and Monterey—Parisian Tryst? Every story seemed to be accompanied by the same picture, a softly lit portrait of Gene and Agnes in profile.
It was a very popular scandal.
Agnes did her damnedest to present a blasé face to the public. She gave an “authorized interview” to the World. She said—truthfully—that she had no idea where Miss Monterey was, but that Gene—and this part was not truthful—was touring with friends in France. When asked, she said no, certainly not, her failure to leave for Europe with him did not constitute what other celebrities have referred to as a “marital vacation.”
To Mam and me, Agnes said she’d told Gene he could just go ahead and have his fling, for that was all it was, she was sure.
“Oh . . . he’ll come back to me . . . he always does . . . all hang-dog as usual.”
But she could not keep up the air of bravado forever. She sat at our kitchen table one morning, all crumpled, and I saw the invisible hand of Gene fly across her face.
She pushed a letter across the table.
I love someone else deeply. There is no possible doubt of this. And the someone loves me. Of that I am certain. You and I have often promised each other that if ever one came to the other and said they loved someone else that we would understand—that we would know that love is something which cannot be denied or argued with.
I was sorry for Agnes, who now seemed a caricature of herself, smoking cigarettes one after another, pushing them wearily round and round in the ashtray, heaving great sighs and shaking her head as if to fling the whole thing off. I was sorry, but I couldn’t help thinking that leaving Agnes was the greatest gift Gene had ever given her. She could find a new man one day. Any man, practically, would be better than Gene. Of course, it was different for the children—by then Agnes and Gene had had another child, Oona, (Oona—it’s Irish for Agnes, Gene had said proudly when she was born)—they couldn’t simply find a new father, or a better father, one day. Eleven-year-old Shane was devastated by his father’s desertion. He went all quiet.
Agnes and her children came to us for Christmas that year. Daddy gave Shane a Daisy BB gun. Every boy needs one of these, he said. I’ll take you to the park, we’ll find a squirrel or two. In the middle of the night we woke to sounds of repeated crashing and stumbled out into the living room.
Shane, tears rolling down his face, was shooting all the ornaments off the Christmas tree.
pamela