Perhaps this is because there is a Supreme Being for Alicia. She believes in God, but I’m not sure what kind of God, and all around her apartment are religious symbols from the major faiths, and probably from some of the minor ones, too. I can only think, because I think in terms of family and tradition, that Alicia must have had an early religious education from which she turned away — it is hard for me to believe her faith wouldn’t have been shaken at some time — and to which she returned with renewed fervor after a terrible event. The loss of the child I’ve already fantasized for her, the acceptance of great failure on her part, the death of a lover, the loss of her singing voice — something must have made her turn again to God. God is a repellent idea to me, and were Alicia not so spiritually ambiguous in effect, whatever her beliefs, I would not be so fond of her. I would not even take tea with her. But she is and I do, with pleasure.
She pours us tea, while asking the usual questions. How’s the work going? She loves my title, Household Gods, for reasons already given. But I’m sure she’d be disappointed or confused by the project were she to read it. No one ever has. The crime books I write go out under another name, and no one here reads them, I’m fairly certain. Alicia and Roger don’t consider it to be real writing, which bothers me but not very much since I too depreciate it. I am more than ambivalent about what I produce under the name Norman East. Now I’m not even sure why I chose that name. It may have had something to do with East Lynne or summers at Northeast Harbor, in Maine. In truth, I’ve forgotten.
Alicia is all in white — white Indian shirt, white duck trousers, which billow about her, and white espadrilles. There’s a white cotton scarf around her throat and probably she is hiding her neck, which may be crepey, showing more years than her face, which is remarkable for its taut skin. But the scarf is tied loosely so that she may be wearing it solely for decoration, not to disguise her age. Alicia doesn’t strike one as a woman who would hide anything in an obvious way, simply not to be a cliché, simply not to appear bourgeois, not to seem to care about what ideally oughtn’t be a concern to an intelligent, rational person. But I always think it is the irrational that tells us much more than the rational; and I am eager to have her get to the point of our meeting. She does so more quickly than is usual.
“Don’t you think it is terrible what young Helen did to poor John?” My first impulse is to say, Who is John? But then I vaguely recall having seen in the distance a lanky, long-haired, nondescript guy — I can’t think of him as a man — wandering in town about the time Helen arrived; then I saw him no more. Or did I? Dear, what did she do to him? I ask. I really have no idea.
Alicia won’t believe this as I have intentionally laid into my voice a qualified archness, and so she will believe that I know what I don’t. I hate not knowing what everyone else knows. She continues and divulges, more or less in this fashion, that John followed Helen here after she refused to marry him. Helen led him on. She allowed him to follow her here and now she refuses even to see him. She abandoned him and the poor boy has tried to kill himself. Ah, I retort, you mean that boy. Alicia, he’s not a child, after all, and if she doesn’t love him…
I’m playing for time. Alicia goes on: John is in the hospital and even now Helen refuses to go to him. And he nearly died. Helen was horrible to him. It’s bad enough that she didn’t want his child and had an abortion when he didn’t want her to.
At this revelation I open my eyes very wide, surely they are popping out. Alicia, dear, are you really in a position to blame a young girl just setting out in life for not wanting to be hampered with a child from a man, a boy, who’s wet behind the ears, one she doesn’t love? Alicia says nothing and looks toward the harbor. And giving up a child for adoption is better? I continue.
Now Alicia’s eyes widen and perhaps it will be this very moment when she can no longer contain within her that horrible secret — the abandoned child, the reckless life she led — but no, she just closes her eyes, takes a breath, during which time she collects herself so as to be able to dissemble, and says, I wouldn’t know. I suppose I don’t really approve of abortion. Then I say something to the effect that it is a good thing she is living here rather than in the States because she would surely be out of touch with the women who have recently won the battle for reproductive rights. I feel foolish putting it that way, as if I were making a speech. Perhaps my feminist ancestors are speaking through me, though probably they wouldn’t have approved of abortion, either. Come to think of it, in the first half of the nineteenth century it was not illegal. Still it is strange to argue what I assume to be the woman’s side, with a woman. I would not call myself a feminist, as I am uncomfortable with almost any label, and also, as I am a man, and rather uncomfortable generally with professing to understand completely the woman’s point of view, I hesitate to make the assertion. Yet I don’t really believe my being a man ought to prevent me from supporting or voicing support for the cause.
Alicia and I agree to disagree with some regularity — she maintains eclectic and inconsistent positions and has erratic views, some more obsolete than my own, some more advanced. In this case, her position demonstrates her stubbornness and a sort of prissy old-fashionedness that may be evidence, or the cause, of her enduring secretiveness. Actually I don’t believe Alicia fully subscribes to what she is saying. I’m sure she’s had abortions, as most free-thinking women who have sex lives usually have had. She is being irrational. Perhaps this is serious.
John visited me days before he — Alicia pauses — before he slit his throat. Slit his throat, I repeat after her, how ghastly. I love the word ghastly. Now I am thinking, there may be more to John, whoever he is, than I imagined. He is a sweet, sweet young man, she goes on, and I can’t see why he clings so to Helen.
Alicia is calling on me, she has summoned me to defend Helen, about whom I know not enough, not that much at all. Helen is brilliant, I respond quickly. She is honest and good-natured. She is independent, a different kind of young woman, Alicia, very different. Rising to the occasion, I continue rhapsodically: Helen is to me like new poetry, a kind of writing I don’t quite fathom; her rhythm and style will be discerned in time. I say this with a flourish and then sip some tea.
Alicia doesn’t know what to do with my exaggerated view, my way of describing Helen, and neither do I. It just came to me in a flash, but I think it’s true, or rather, I am prepared to defend its truth. Especially if Helen is my tabula rasa. But then that means I am writing her, and I am not, since I couldn’t possibly make her up. I do try in my modest way to make it new, as Pound exhorted. It is also important to be able to recognize what is new, as I do in Helen. I attempt, in my real work, to follow that adage. On the surface, and to the world, the world of appearances, I seem not terribly underground in my manner and thinking. Burroughs, for example, is not to my taste. I live my life and exist, in a certain sense, underground, but even that is underground. I am guarded. I don’t flaunt anything, except when I’m drunk. There’s nothing novel about that. Maybe bohemian or vulgar but not new.