I ask what has she done today. Helen has taught two English classes. I believe she landed the teaching job by lying; she must have told the school she had a college degree. It’s a real drag, Helen says. Her students have to learn how to write formal business letters; it’s in the syllabus, and she must follow it. Her students are grateful for each bit of information she imparts, Helen thinks, as if one of those bits might transform them into rich Americans. This is how they model themselves upon America. I jocularly suggest that when Ari Onassis and Jackie Kennedy married, they were anointed the king and queen of Greece, and, in a sense, they have encouraged this avariciousness. I go on about Onassis’ having an unhappy, jealous daughter; it augurs badly, I say. Helen has compassion for Christina.
I find it hard to be sorry for the very rich, but when I was Helen’s age I was also more generous. I bet Christina kills herself, Helen says knowingly. Suicide? I repeat. She nods and strips her fish off the bone. I could prolong the discussion about suicide, but I am too guilt-ridden to do so. How could I even think about a book based on Helen’s misery, her alleged misery, that of the suicide of her sister or the murder of her sister, her twin? I swallow my wine and pour some more, to wash down my guilt. Helen may be very very rich. I hadn’t seriously considered that before. I know that Roger has. He has a nose for such things.
She is not disturbed by Roger’s impolite behavior. But how does she see him? I wonder. Perhaps she is also undisturbed by John’s near suicide. She seems to be. But how could she be if it may parallel even slightly her sister’s, her twin’s?
In profile Helen’s features are perfect. The blue sky, darkening swiftly now, surrounds her moodily. It is as if she were untouched by the cruelty and meanness of life, by the sailors, by John, by death. Perhaps everyone is until one reaches a certain age. That must be it — at a certain age the burden of everything that has happened to one in life achieves a critical mass; suddenly it collapses upon one and, bearing down heavily, weighs one down, and one experiences the enormity of it all. And then we understand. If we do. And with that, the pungent sensation of aging commences.
Still, Helen’s reticence marks her as special if not unique, like a piece of art. I treasure her though she undoubtedly has a flaw, not unlike the golden bowl. I’m not sure what her flaw is or how to judge it. Yet I know she has one, perhaps many. These will deepen with age. But she has time, a great deal of time. It is pleasant to sit with her, to let time drift. I am spending her time. I look with her toward the sea. We are silent for long periods. She respects silence. She may be mulling things over or thinking of absolutely nothing. I do find her reticence akin to art, as art makes order out of chaos, and I think there must be a great deal of it in her life — chaos, that is.
The sea stretches before us. I meditate upon the artists, like Turner and Monet, who painted sky and sea, who were bewitched by the grandeur of nature, its unfathomability, its mystery. Nature hides the sea’s deeper life from us; normally we see only a watery surface. A painting reflects that surface, containing the chaos we fear beneath. I rely on art and need order, but I’m not sure that Helen does, in the same way. Or if she does these needs haven’t yet made a definite impression on her character. She never speaks of art, of paintings, just of music, movies and television, and books, occasionally. At least she reads them.
Sometimes I look at her and remind myself: Helen was born when you were past forty, Horace, or she was born after the Korean War, or during the heyday of the abstract expressionists, which would mean nothing to her. Both aspects of the thought interest me — how old I was when she was born and that she wouldn’t care about that art movement or even the Korean War. I was moderately opposed to the Korean War. I was not indifferent to the abstract expressionists, though I was not convinced by them, either. They were so male, for one thing, and I distrusted their blatant masculinity. I admired the surrealists, Duchamp especially; he broke new ground. One saw the surrealists about New York in the forties, during the Second World War. In my heart of hearts, I have to confess a preference for Caravaggio, Matisse, Edward Hopper, and Cézanne. Where would the cubists have been without Cézanne!
In some ways I am in favor of what is new, almost on principle. I will argue this principle to the death, especially with Roger. Pop art was a welcome change — it leapt out when life was so dull, during the Eisenhower years, but it blossomed a little later, I remember. On a visit to New York in the sixties I saw marvelous art exhibitions. Gwen took me to the Factory, where I felt shy, and hung about awkwardly posing, and never did see Andy Warhol. I don’t think I could have managed it. I would have had to behave reverentially and he wouldn’t have found me attractive. But the boys around the Factory were wonderfully attractive, if somewhat frightening. The ambience was immensely different from that of the Cedar Tavern. Very perverse, but I enjoyed it even if it intimidated me. It was most assuredly a different intimidation from that created by those masculine painters with their burly arms and broad backs, who boldly discussed their paintings and their women — but mostly their paintings — over shots of Scotch and chasers of beer.
I assume Helen appreciates Andy Warhol, though she has mentioned only the group he spawned, the Velvet Underground, not that she ever saw them live, she explained to me. I am used not to seeing things live. Helen has never been to the Cedar Tavern. She has a dim recollection of hearing about it either when she was posing or when she took an art class from a bearded man who wore work shirts, a costume she found funny. By funny I think she means many things, but I’m afraid to pry too much.
It was the beginning of the time when Helen abjured any kind of naturalness and had dyed her hair and pierced her nose, for a nose ring. The nose ring, a stud, horrified Alicia. Smitty wears it less often these days, but when she does, it’s worn indifferently, almost as if it were meaningless, and perhaps it is to her. How Alicia went on about it! It fits Helen, though, to transform and mark her body. She is a bold canvas on which everything appears to have landed with abandon, with splatters here and there; and her scars, most invisible to the eye, and marks, tangible and intangible, about these nothing must be said. And no, no explanations will be given.
From her point of view, it may be that we’ve known each other all our lives, but mine is so much longer than hers. Yet this may account for her not needing to reveal herself to me in any specific sense. When Helen does reveal herself, she does it without guile, as if dropping her clothes before an audience of art students meant to study and render the female form. Along with artist’s modeling, she has done go-go dancing and stripping. Do you miss home? I ask her, as the sun dips low, peeking slyly above the horizon.
Helen first left home one summer when she was sixteen; she left it without regret, it seems, and casually mentions having taken up with a couple of guys and having gone on the road with a friend, hitchhiking. It is nearly inconceivable to me that she has actually done these things. Helen stripping and hitchhiking. When she attended college, briefly — and though they were not speaking, I gather — her parents paid her tuition. What did and do her parents think of her? Did John, does he, want to protect her? Do men still want to protect women, if they ever did?
Roger has been joined by a blond Adonis. It is not true that I take Roger’s castoffs. It is nearly opposite to the truth, not apposite to it. The blond may be Manolis, one of those feminine boys who fled to Athens. He’s matured excellently. Roger will take him in for a while, I know, then tire of him. Roger is a coquette, more coquettish than Helen has ever been, I’m sure. She glances from me to Roger several times, but says nothing. She is observing our scene and sometimes I feel queasy about this. She sips her coffee and asks, rather innocently, Does Roger pay him?