by Sally Mandel
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“They’re having problems.”
“Well, there was the baby …”
“No, I don’t think it’s that. I called Robin to ask about the Vermont trip. She was strange.”
“You know something? I bet it’d be too painful for them this year, spending parents’-day weekend up there surrounded by our kids.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Phyllis said. “I guess it just seems like a tradition after all these years.”
“What did she say, exactly?” Maggie asked.
“I can’t put my finger on anything in particular. Her voice was peculiar and she said ‘I’ a few times instead of ‘we.’ Robin’s always been very big on ‘we’ and ‘us.’ I bet she wants to adopt and Jackson’s refused.”
Maggie sat twisting her napkin guiltily. It was no use telling herself that Phyllis was imagining things. Maggie had all too profound a respect for her friend’s intuitive powers. And the truth was, Maggie had not phoned Robin in two weeks.
“Don’t look so miserable, Mag,” Phyllis said. “You know that whatever Jackson decides, Robin will eventually convince herself he’s right and she’ll live with it.”
Maggie picked at her salad. Phyllis watched her for a moment, then said, “How about another neutral subject?”
“Yes, please.”
“So what do you hear from the kids lately?” Phyllis asked.
Maggie laughed. “Not a whole lot, of course. Fred scrawls a line now and then with requests for things, mainly food. But Susan’s suddenly turned into a correspondent. I got two pages this morning.”
They spent the remainder of the meal discussing their children. Then Maggie glanced at her watch. “One-thirty already. I think I’ll skip dessert and coffee today.”
Phyllis gave her a suspicious look, then sighed. “Me, too. I love their homemade ice cream but it just melts right onto my thighs and sits there. Let’s get the check. I can see you’re about to have an anxiety attack.”
Outside on the street, it had begun to rain. “Oh, look at this,” Maggie cried in dismay. “Wouldn’t you know it would rain? I didn’t bring my umbrella, and God, the traffic.” A siren wailed. Looking up Lexington Avenue, which was jammed with cars, Maggie could see the flashing lights of an ambulance. Unexpectedly, it pushed south past the entrance to Lenox Hill Hospital. As the emergency vehicle reached Seventy-fifth Street where Phyllis and Maggie stood, the light changed. Traffic began to move across town, ignoring the scream of the ambulance.
“Jesus, Phyl,” Maggie said. “They don’t even let it through.”
“New York,” Phyllis said.
“Idiots!” Maggie stepped off the curb into the intersection and held up her hand. “Stop, you creep!” she cried at a taxi driver. The startled cabbie slammed on his brakes and hung out the window to shout at her. But in the meantime, the ambulance managed to squeeze behind Maggie and move on down the avenue.
Back on the sidewalk, Phyllis gaped at her and shook her head. “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” she said softly.
Maggie was to meet David at the West Village School for the Arts, where he taught sculpture three afternoons a week. In the cab, she was struck by a powerful ambivalence. She was eager to be included in this other mysterious sector of his life, in anything that would enrich the texture of him so that she would know him inside and out, inch by inch. But on the other hand, what if David were a dreadful teacher, inarticulate or nervous or foolish? What if they were both embarrassed?
The school was in a small brownstone on West Thirteenth Street. She followed the sound of chisels tapping against stone, and slipped into a large fluorescent-lit studio containing David and six women. David was leaning over the shoulder of a middle-aged lady with blue-white hair. The discussion was intense, Maggie could see, with the woman shaking her head in bewilderment and David being insistent. Finally he stood up. He looked in Maggie’s direction but did not appear to have seen her.
“Hold it a minute!” he shouted over the din. As he spoke, he paced back and forth, back and forth. “Mrs. Ridgeway here has a problem. It’s a familiar dilemma for sculptors and I’d like to throw it out to you.” He paused. Everyone gazed at him respectfully and Maggie relaxed. He was obviously in full control. “Sometimes you’ll get a stubborn stone. Maybe there’s an imperfection in the marble or maybe it’s some elusiveness in your own vision. You have to come to an agreement with your material, and you’re the one who has to make the adjustment. It takes patience sometimes. I’ve had stones stare at me for months before I figured out what I’m supposed to be doing. You must be flexible, but don’t compromise. Adjust. Can you understand the difference?”
There were a few slow nods, but not from Mrs. Ridgeway. She seemed close to tears.
“A word about polishing,” David said, “since some of you are at that point now.”
“Thank God,” said a stringy young woman near the window.
David smiled. “Yes, it means, really, that your struggles are over, it’s all been resolved. I regard polishing as my way of apologizing to the stone for all the abuse I’ve given it. It should be a bit like making love. Your carving will reward you with a wonderful soft glow.” He shot Maggie a tiny smile. So he had seen her after all.
“That’s it for today. Make sure everything is put away in the proper slot. No points with chisels, please. See you Friday. Please stay for a moment, Mrs. Ridgeway.”
After the others had left, Maggie stood uncertainly in the doorway. But David had drawn the woman over to the window and was already deep into conversation with her. She was crying openly now, and David held her hand, all the time speaking urgently in a low voice. After a while, Mrs. Ridgeway got up heavily, blew her nose, and left, passing Maggie wordlessly. David waved at her to join him.
“My goodness,” Maggie said.
“I told her it was no use,” David explained.
“Oh,” Maggie said.
“The woman has absolutely no ability. Look at that.” He swept his hand toward the sandstone lump that represented several weeks of Mrs. Ridgeway’s attention. “She was all set to sign up for another semester.”
“Maybe she just enjoys it.”
“Oh, she does. I don’t know why. She was with me last term and she did another couple of awful things. But it’s criminal.”
“What’s criminal? Her spending money on the class?”
David seemed surprised at the question. “No, her producing these ugly hunks.”
“What’s the harm, David, if she gets pleasure out of it? Nobody has to look at it except her.”
“But, Maggie, it’s what she’s doing to those beautiful pieces of rock. It’s like child abuse. I’ve even had nightmares about it.”
“You’re an uncompromising man.”
“About some things, yes.”
Her eyes accused him silently.
“Maggie, do you think she was devastated?”
“Yes. But it was nice of you to hold her hand.”
“I wasn’t aware that I did.”
“I hope you don’t ever feel that way about me,” Maggie said fervently.
“How could I? You’re a wonderful artist.”
“No, I mean that you wouldn’t know if you were touching me.”
“Not likely.”
He took her hand and kissed the palm.
“I liked that part about making love to the stone.”
“I was thinking about you at the time. And trying to figure out the fastest way to get uptown.”
“I’ll treat you to a cab.”
“A deal.”
They lay on David’s mattress in the gray light listening to the rain sweep across the windows like waves breaking. Today they had not delayed making love by lingering over mugs of tea; they were far too greedy. David’s body was ready for her before they reached the top of his stairs.
“What is it that’s so wonderful about summer rai
n?” Maggie murmured sleepily.
“Makes things grow.”
“Like this.” Maggie held his penis, miraculously soft and yielding, stone transformed to flower. “How frightening to carry all these important things on the outside. I’m glad mine is hidden away in the dark.”
“Not all of it,” David said. A gentle throbbing had begun in response to Maggie’s curious fingers.
“It curves,” Maggie said, watching him grow erect in her hand.
David laughed and pulled her over on top of him. The wind sent another spray of raindrops against the windows. “Like making love beside the sea.”
“And I’m riding a dolphin,” Maggie said, bending down to kiss him.
They stood naked, looking out over the Hudson River. Sometimes the clouds were gray and impenetrable, sometimes they were wispy enough to permit a glimpse of a ghostly high-rise on the New Jersey side. David had opened the window so that the mist could cool their bodies. “Just the two of us, alone in Atlantis,” he said.
Maggie leaned her head against him. “You’re the only person I know who could turn Fort Lee, New Jersey, into an underwater utopia.” She was silent a moment. “I’ve been wondering about Sharon. Do you mind talking about her?”
“No.”
“I’d like to know more.”
“She was … small. A small person who made little rustling noises, like a mouse in the breadbox.”
“You don’t make her sound terribly significant.”
“She wasn’t.”
“But all those years.”
“Maggie, I didn’t know you. It was another life. When I met you in class that night, it was like entering a new dimension, as it was when I discovered art. All the definitions changed. Nothing will ever be the same.”
Maggie thought about Matthew. He had been the earth and she a satellite spinning around him, governed totally by his field of gravity. And now he was a shadow who moved in and out of her world. She fed him, spoke to him, but he no longer had substance or vitality. “I’m getting cold,” she said.
He draped a sheet around her, then stood back to take a look.
“A David Golden original,” Maggie said. “Elegant in its simplicity.” She watched his eyes move over her body with the cool obsessive scrutiny of the artist. “All right, I’ll do it,” she sighed, understanding that he would want her to pose for him this way. “Sometime. But I get to do you nude.”
He grinned at her. He hated sitting still for her sketches. “Bargain. Come on, I’ll make you some tea.”
Maggie sat wrapped in her sheet while he filled the kettle. He wore an old-fashioned tank-style undershirt. There was barely enough flesh on him to cover muscle and bone. While his back and shoulders rippled as he busied himself in the kitchen, Maggie gazed into the essence of him. She could see ligaments twisting as he reached over his head for the sugar bowl. His lungs swelled and shrank rhythmically, his blood marched through his veins in short pulsing steps, the bones in his long fingers flexed and straightened as he poured boiling water into the teapot.
He looked up at her suddenly. “What are you thinking?”
“Why?”
“I feel like I’m being X-rayed.”
Maggie laughed. David’s uncanny perceptions no longer stunned her, but there was always delight when he availed himself of his direct route into her thoughts.
He poured the tea out into mugs, taking care to give Maggie her favorite with the moon design. They sat quietly for a while, enjoying the warmth of hot tea and intimacy.
“Know where these flowers come from?” David asked her finally, indicating the red carnations Maggie had brought him a few days ago.
“Holland,” Maggie guessed.
He shook his head. “The Andes. They grow very high up. It’s desolate, nothing green at all, just scrubby brown villages here and there in the mountains, and then suddenly these brilliant patches of color, field after field of carnations in rose, pink, white. They’re shipped off to the States by the ton.”
Maggie imagined the barren peaks adorned with blossoms, like bony old ladies whose necks were draped with jewels. “That’s what I want to do with my work,” she said.
“You mean the surprise?”
“Yes, that, and also the beauty. I don’t want to make ugly art. I don’t see the point. Life is grim enough as it is.”
“You want to celebrate the good stuff.”
“Yes.” She glanced at David’s sculptures. “You, too.”
“We’re propagandists, I suppose,” David said.
“Yes, but aren’t all artists trying to make people see things the way they do?”
“That’s part of it, sure,” David replied. “But for me most of the impulse comes from trying to work something out for myself. It’s more self-discovery than getting a message across.”
Maggie thought about her new fascination with constructions. It was an adventure in building rather than copying out what she saw. If nobody ever saw her work, she would still be driven to do it, and yet there was an effort to communicate as well. The long-dormant part of her was demanding attention now. She wished she understood it better.
“David, what were you doing in the Andes?”
“Peace Corps.”
She shook her head. Facts about David kept rising to the surface and popping in her face like bubbles. “The Peace Corps and the army?”
“I’m a patriot.” He drew his chair next to hers so that they were sitting thigh to thigh. “Besides, I could never figure out what to do about a job.”
“You put your face very close to people when you talk to them,” Maggie said. “Is that Southern?”
“I only do it with you.” His mouth was two inches from hers.
“No, you do it to everybody. There was that poor lady in Zabar’s when you were telling her where to get bagels. She looked alarmed, because you kept closing in on her until she was stuck right up against the Russian coffee cake.”
“I’ll have to watch it.”
“It’s very sexy.” She kissed him.
He drew his hand through her hair. “Maggie.”
“What?”
“Move in with me.”
She stared at him.
“I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry. I’ll take it back if I can.” He held her hands between his. “Do you have any idea what it’s like for me when you’ve gone?”
“Yes.”
“I drift around like an empty husk, and every minute I’m thinking about the next time.”
“It’s the same for me, David.”
“Then please.”
“Oh, God.”
David stood up. His chair scraped harshly across the wood floor. “I wasn’t ever going to do this. I have no right. I’m not the one with a family. This is my family.” He gestured angrily toward the carvings. “I don’t even know what it means to be a part of something like that. I’m jealous of it, Maggie.” His face was anguished. “I want too much. I want everything, and I’m pressuring you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you know I think about it all the time too?” Maggie said. “It’s so easy now, with the kids away. I imagine just packing my bags.”
“Do it.”
“And send the children a postcard with a pretty picture of the West Side explaining that Mommy has left them?”
David turned away from her to stare out the window. “What about you, Maggie? When are you ever going to start thinking about you?”
“But I am thinking about me. Thinking about them is thinking about me.” He was silent. She put her arms around his waist from behind and leaned her head against his back. “Sometimes I believe I’m losing track of reality.”
He spun around. “Reality is you and me.” He took her hand and touched it to his mouth, his heart, his crotch. “And this, and this, and this.” She began to look frightened. “Ah, Maggie,” he went on softly. “I never cared for a woman before, and now I want you with me ever
y second.” He held her quietly for a moment. “But if we had to go on like this for the rest of our lives, it would be enough. I could handle it.”
“Things don’t stand still like that.”
“They will if we make them, if we want it badly enough.”
She shook her head. “David, I’m such a conventional person, really.”
“You’re not as conventional as you think.”
Maggie eased back in his arms. Sometimes it seemed to her that his face was just two immense burning eyes. “What do I give you, David?”
He looked surprised. “You know me. No one else on this earth knows me except you. You live inside my head, my guts, sometimes I don’t know where you leave off and I begin or who thought what. We recognized one another that first night, remember? It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes and I knew who you were, what you could mean.” He shook her gently. “Shit, Maggie, maybe there’s some other language that has words for it.”
She knew that it was nearly time for her to go. “I want us to work together,” she said, grasping for something they could both look forward to. “If you’re just polishing now, couldn’t I be there at your desk?”
“I’d like that. But when is it going to be?”
Now came the excruciating part. Matthew’s mother was due this evening. It would be difficult to get away. “I don’t think I can come again until a week from tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
“It’s my mother-in-law. Sometimes she hovers and sometimes she ignores me totally. I can never predict which it’s going to be.”
“Will you call me if you can come before?”
“Yes. David, I hate this more than anything.”
“I know.”
On the way across town, Maggie put her hands to her face and took a deep breath. After she had been with David, her fingers always had the clean dry scent of stone dust.
“Hello, my darling!” Rhoda Hollander threw her arms around Matthew’s neck. Maggie watched him flinch. The older woman pulled back and examined her son’s face. “But a trifle peaked, n’est-ce pas?”
