“As he didn’t understand you.”
“When we left The Candy Box after the shooting we took a cab back to the Plaza. He saw me to the elevator, then went out for a walk, to clear his brain, he said. He didn’t come back, and after an hour I feared he wouldn’t, so I got dressed again and scoured the lobby and the hotel bars, because I couldn’t believe he’d left me. I preferred the Life editor’s apartment, where my things were, if I was going to spend the night alone, but I still thought there was a small chance Orson would return. And I knew he knew I’d wait for him in the hotel. And so I did. I phoned Peter and found Orson had neither been there nor called. Peter said he knew an all-night bar where Orson sometimes went and offered to go there alone, or with me if I wanted. He said he’d call Claire, but I knew that would achieve nothing, and it did.”
“We were up at Saratoga Lake for three weeks. Mama was dead six months and it was a suffocating summer. We were sitting on the veranda talking about I don’t know what, and I saw that a new arrival, a good-looking fellow who had struck up a conversation with Sarah yesterday, was talking with her again. Then I saw a bird fly into a tree on the lawn, and it must’ve hit something, because it fell to the ground. I ran out to get it and picked it up and started to cry. The newcomer squatted down beside me and said, ‘May I see it?’ And I showed him this beautiful creature that he said was a cedar waxwing. ‘It seems to have an injured wing,’ he said. ‘We can help him.’ I asked how that was possible and he said, ‘We’ll keep him alive while he gets well.’ And that’s what we did for the rest of the week. We fed him and made a nest for him in the birdcage the hotel gave us and he became the pet of the guests. I loved him so, that little creature. Everybody came to my room to see him. We took him out of the cage and he did fly a little inside the room at the end of the week, but not very well. On the tenth day he seemed ready and, when I carried him to the veranda, a dozen guests and waitresses came out to watch him go. I released him over the porch railing and he flew so well, right up into the same tree he’d fallen from. We were all so happy. He perched there in the tree for a minute and then he fell again, not injured, but dead.”
“Orson was gone two more nights before we found him. Peter had the idea to call Walker Pettijohn, Orson’s editor, who suggested looking in Meriwether Macbeth’s apartment. He said Orson sometimes worked there among Macbeth’s papers that Macbeth’s widow still kept intact, though she no longer lived there. And Orson was there all right, and as close to death as he ever will be until his time comes. He was in an alcoholic coma, five whiskey bottles, all empty, strewn around the room. Peter lifted him up and slapped his face but he didn’t come to, didn’t react at all. Death in life. And if he did live he wouldn’t remember anything of this moment. I went out to a pay phone and called the ambulance.”
“It was sad that the bird died. I cried so hard. But I’ve been grateful to it ever since, because that’s how I met Walter. The cedar waxwing introduced us. Walter picked the dead bird up and took it into the hotel and wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it on ice and we called around till we found a place, down home in Albany, that stuffed birds. We drove down together and gave the waxwing to the little man, who said he’d never stuffed such a small bird before, usually folks only stuff the big ones they shoot, owls and hawks, or their pet parrots. I still have the bird. I always bring it when I come up here.”
“Who is Walter?”
“Walter Mangan, my husband. He taught Latin in a boys’ high school. He died in 1937.”
“And you miss him still.”
“We were so in love. Nobody loves you like an Irishman. He read me poetry about the bird.
“ ‘. . A sparrow is dead, my lady’s sparrow,
my own lady’s delight, her sweetest plaything,
dear to her as her eyes — and dearer even. .
I’ll attend you, O evil gods of darkness.
All things beautiful end in you forever.
You have taken away my pretty sparrow,
Shame upon you. And, pitiful poor sparrow,
it is you that have set my lady weeping,
Dear eyes, heavy with tears and red with sorrow.’ ”
“I went mad for Orson when we met. He wasn’t like anybody else I’d ever known. He made me laugh and he was smart and he was crazy and I loved it.”
“You sent him home alone.”
“He was sick and I knew he’d get well in New York. I had a chance at a career, and I knew if I had to nurse him and abandon the career I’d hate him. And what kind of marriage would that turn into?”
“Walter was never sick. You must never leave them alone for long. You would’ve gotten your career.”
“Did you ever leave Walter alone?”
“Did I ever leave Walter alone.”
“Orson left me alone and then he went off to drink himself into oblivion. He stole the world for me, put himself in jeopardy, facing jail, really, and then he went off to die. I love him so for that.”
“You love that he wanted to die for you?”
“He wanted to die for the image of me. He was too crazy to see I was only a bright, immature woman out to save herself, which is really all I knew how to do. He wanted to make me into a goddess and I helped him, because I loved the idea of such a man, and loved what his love did to me.”
“But the love was a lie.”
“You should have seen us in bed.”
“But you didn’t stay in his bed.”
“No.”
“Did he ever understand how you were leading him on?”
“I wasn’t leading him on. I was trying to be equal to his dream. I’d deceive him again if it meant keeping that love alive.”
“Are you brighter than Orson?”
“Would it make any difference if I was?”
“You know something, but love isn’t what you know.”
“I know everything about love.”
“Walter and I made love in a tent the first time. He set up his pup tent in the woods one night after supper, and went out to stay in it as soon as it got dark. I went down the back stairs and met him in the spot where we watched the birds, and Walter had a flashlight. We went to his tent and he loved me and made my heart bleed with joy. . like. . holy and blessed Jesus. . like nothing else. There was never anything like that, ever before, in anybody’s life I’d ever heard about. Have you? I’d bleed every night if I knew we’d both feel like that when we were done. Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. Maybe.”
“He never came right out and asked me to marry him. We were walking on Pearl Street one day and he says to me, ‘How’d you like to be buried with my people?’ I said I’d like that just fine. But we didn’t marry then, because I couldn’t. We married when I was able and we took a flat up in the Pine Hills, and I was never happier, ever. A year passed and Tommy fell crossing a street and broke his wrist, and Sarah got sick and couldn’t cook for Chick and him, so I went back home and ran things till Sarah could get on her feet. But she couldn’t. The doctor tried everything, but she was so weak she couldn’t get out of bed, and she wouldn’t go to the hospital. Walter got impatient with me after two months of it, me being with her more than I was with him. And we fought. He said Sarah was faking sickness to keep me there, that she never forgave me for taking his attention away from her that day on the porch. But I couldn’t believe that. Why would she ever do such a thing? Walter never meant anything to her. There was no sense to it. Walter said I should hire a woman to cook and keep house for two weeks so we could drive to Virginia to see his brother, and also break in my new car. He’d bought it for me, but I hardly drove it. It just sat in the alley on Colonie Street while I took care of Sarah. Sarah wouldn’t hear of hiring anybody, wouldn’t allow a woman in the house that wasn’t family, so I didn’t go to Virginia. Walter went with one of his friends from the school, and the friend fell asleep at the wheel and went over a ravine and they were both killed.”