It was raining the day Eddie O’Toole came to interview Pamela. He was quite young, not a day over twenty-five, and looked closer to eighteen once he’d taken off his dripping homburg and exposed his boyish, freckled face. His red hair, all disheveled, endeared him to me straight off. Of course by the time he arrived at our place in Stuyvesant Square, the only reminder of Francesco’s former glory was a reddish-gray ring round his head. But it had sprouted anew on the head of little Lorenzo, who darted round the parlor like a dancing flame as Eddie talked with Pamela. The boy’s antics didn’t seem to faze the reporter at all. Well, he was an O’Toole. He probably had lots of brothers and sisters.
Francesco and I sat with Pamela during the interview. We had to be careful. Pamela can be terribly reserved. Silent, in fact. And she can be quite gullible. She has no sense of self-protection, no idea of self-promotion. She would answer questions plainly, simply tell the truth. She has no idea of dodging issues, glossing things over. It drives Francesco crazy.
But in this case, I thought it went well. Eddie was patient and deferential. Pamela warmed up to him almost immediately, becoming quite talkative. She showed him the illustrations for The Little Mermaid she’d done in Connecticut. And she opened up about some ideas she had for future work, told him she wanted to write an ABC book for Lorenzo, then perhaps more illustrated books would follow. She even told him about the large canvasses in her head—“Larger paintings than I have ever done before!” she said in a burst of passion. It was just then that Francesco took Lorenzo’s hand and led him from the room, asking if he’d like a bit of hot chocolate.
I thought he was just trying to get the child out of the way, give the reporter some peace. For once I hadn’t read him correctly. My antenna for these things is usually quite sensitive—I’m always on guard, ready to deflect this, patch up that. Sometimes I think that my biggest role in this world is the go-between. Margery Bianco, Perpetual Conciliator.
Part of the reason I didn’t quite catch on was that as Pamela was talking to Eddie, I had opened a folder I held in my lap, a folder she’d put together of some of her old pictures. I was distracted by the top one. A line drawing she’d done in Turin, the day after her first exhibition opened—a portrait of me, sitting at my desk, wrapping up that beautiful Murano vase. A wedding gift for Agnes. What the picture doesn’t show is the letter that’s hidden under the wrapping paper. A letter from my sister Cecil, announcing that Agnes had run off and married a man named Eugene O’Neill, a playwright. No one had met the mysterious groom yet. It had all been quite secretive. Agnes had written to her parents, as if it were something rather miraculous, that her new husband had written several well-received plays. But Cecil was skeptical. She said that Agnes had never before shown any interest in the theatre, and she feared her daughter had tangled herself up with a ne’er-do-well scribbler. She was afraid that Gene would be more than happy to have Agnes support him with the income she made from selling her popular pulp stories.
I was thinking to myself . . . if only that had been his greatest sin. . . .
And so I missed the look of displeasure that must have crossed Francesco’s face as he left the room.
When Eddie had finished his interview with Pamela, I accompanied him to the front door. It was already quite dark outside. I switched on the hall light. In the tiny entry, the tulip lamp lit up Pamela’s little painting of a cherub haloed in gilt. It transformed the dreary hole into a merry, welcoming spot. Eddie stood for bit, admiring the painting.
“Do you think she’ll exhibit again?” he asked. It took me by surprise.
“Oh, yes, I expect so,” I said, too quickly. I’m afraid my doubts showed through. He held out his hand and thanked me profusely for the tea, for our hospitality. As he left the rain blew in, but I stood there a while and watched him walk down to the corner. The rain fell on him, a spray of yellow diamonds in the glow of the lamplight. He turned north on Second Avenue and disappeared from sight. What was his mother like? I wondered. What sort of life did he have, what sort of future? What would he write about Pamela? I even wondered, did he like the rain?
That night, after Pamela had gone to bed, Francesco and I retreated to the kitchen. He didn’t wait long to let me know that Pamela’s exuberant declarations about her future plans had irked him terribly. As I poured Vermouth into our favorite little green glasses from Italy, I ventured, “It went rather well with our young Mr. O’Toole, don’t you think? Pamela was certainly—”
“She was certainly foolhardy, is what she was.” And that was when he told me he’d had to leave the room so that Pamela wouldn’t see his irritation. I told him I was quite grateful for that.
“An ABC book for God’s sake! That is the future she envisions? And some vague thing about large pictures. . . .” He was talking too loudly; I was very afraid that Pamela would hear. I gestured to him, nodding in the general direction of the bedrooms, and we began to whisper conspiratorially.
“How will it look to people when they read that the girl who astonished the world now wants to draw an ABC book for her son, and oh, by the way, when she gets ready, after she’s properly prepared, after she’s learned to draw . . . don’t look at me like that, Margery, those were her words . . . and after she’s learned to draw, well then perhaps she’ll paint some really big canvasses.”
I told him that Eddie hardly seemed the sort to write a negative piece, he seemed particularly empathetic to me. I pointed out that Pamela had been at her most charming, that her confessions showed her lack of guile, and that I thought she had shown a great deal of optimism regarding her future work. But Francesco was not to be moved, and we were both aware that I felt there was some truth in what he said.
At any rate, we both thought that was the end of that. That Eddie’s visit was the end of the affair. We had only to wait to see what The New Yorker printed. We hardly expected a second call.
pamela
It was a very erratic love affair. Sometimes Robert would disappear for days and days—but I didn’t mind that. I now knew what I’d been desperate to know, and the knowledge made me feel all light and beaming. Prideful. Whenever I passed a young woman on the street I’d think, Do you know? I do!