“It pays to become identified with one scent, it adds to your mystique. The only perfume worth wearing is French,” Sylvia said more than once. By then I was using Replique and Ma Griffe exclusively. The perfume bottles were tucked in the bureau alongside my jar of Germaine Monteil moisturizing cream and the Pierre Cardin neck scarf.
Sylvia commented on more than my attire.
“Really, those nasturtiums don’t show up well in that vase. You need to arrange them.” There was a bite in her voice that took me back. Before I could say anything she snatched her packing case and was gone.
Sylvia was absent most of the time now. Doing what I wasn’t sure. Sometimes a low sports car pulled up to the curb and she was off for a cruise to Catalina Island. The people in white jackets and sunglasses I saw ushering her into the back seat were strangers to me.
Weekends I was often on my own. One evening as I was having dinner at a Mexican restaurant packed with students, Randall, a tall boy with a sweep of brown hair across his forehead and horn-rimmed glasses, approached and asked if he could share my table. After we’d discussed the novel assigned in our French lit class over plates of enchiladas, he walked me back to the apartment. I led him up the front walk and around the side to our recessed entrance.
“This place has a lot of character,” he remarked, studying the marble dining table and the four Asian floor pillows. “Quite original. Like a Left Bank atelier.” He regarded the oil canvases hung along the walls. “That’s interesting work.”
“Sylvia painted those.”
Randall inspected the paintings closely. “Very unusual. Dark, mysterious, fanciful. All of these were done by your roommate? And who is the woman in these photographs?” He pointed to the opposite wall. “Your roommate?”
“Yes. She’s done some modeling. She also writes poetry. Here’s a hand-made book of her poems.” I lifted a burgundy and ochre booklet from the desk.
Randall sat down on the couch and before long I’d told him the story of my friendship with Sylvia, my Midwestern roots, and my writing efforts. I even touched on Sylvia’s frequent absences.
Randall shook his head. “I get the idea. This whole place,” he swept his arm over the room, “Is inundated with Sylvia. Her work covers the walls, her photograph is everywhere, her furnishings, her taste, even—” he held up a peacock colored umbrella, “I’ll bet this umbrella belongs to her. Where are you in all this? Why don’t you put your picture up? Where are your books?”
“I’m really not inclined to do that. I have no interest in displaying myself.”
What had I to display? Now he was regarding me closely.
“Look, I understand what you’re saying,” I added, “but I’m not a painter and posing for beauty shots doesn’t tempt me in the slightest.”
Randall looked unconvinced.
“You’re too modest and you’d better look to yourself,” was all he said.
At this point Sylvia breezed through the door, and seeing us sitting cozily on the couch set about fixing a pot of tea. As she did so she chatted blithely about her afternoon at Malibu Beach and impending date for the evening.
Randall stood up. “Thanks for lending me the novel,” he said. “I’ll return it.” I followed him to the front stoop and he turned to look at me. “Sylvia is so obvious. Why do you put up with her?”
But I would have none of it. My best friend, my muse, my one intimate was not to be faulted. Sylvia could brag as much as she liked. What was that to me? I didn’t want to change anything. But change seeped into our bohemian life without me making a move. It wasn’t until weeks later that Randall’s words came back to me, this time with a piercing significance.
* * *
I heard the front door bang and saw the living room flush with light. Putting my book down, I slipped off the bed, trod bare-footed into the living room, and stood in the yellow circle of light from the overhead bulb. Sylvia rushed past me with blazing cheeks and a set of keys clinking between her fingers.
“I’m in a terrible hurry,” she said breathlessly, flinging a gold velvet tote on the couch and swishing into the kitchen, “I’m to meet the Schisgal’s in half hour and I’m not at all ready. A group of us are tooling up to Monterey. Oh, my, so much to do, so little time. I don’t know how I can stand it.”
She swished past me again.
“Judy, will you get me my bathing stuff from the top shelf if in the closet: suit, mauve terry jacket, white cap, and my towel, the lime and purple one? They put in a new pool where the arboretum used to be. Oh, where’s my chiffon scarf? I’m dying for a ginger ale!”
Since I had a test to study for and a novel to read and underline I couldn’t have accompanied the party, but I felt a sting of disappointment at being excluded. Sylvia had acquired new artist friends from her painting job at the Santa Monica hotel, while my studies and part-time work at the campus recruiting office consumed most of my time.
“Hurry, Judy, I’m late,” sounded Sylvia’s voice from the kitchen. I could hear the refrigerator door open and ice cracking into the sink.
“Are your arms broken?”
“Don’t be stupid. I’m in a bind. Please.” I went to the closet and fetched the articles she’d requested. “Put them in the alligator overnight case under the bed. Thanks.”
Irritated by her commanding manner, I drew a breath and went over to the kitchen door.
“Sylvia, the way you tear about—how can you do justice to your work, your studies, or your art? Shouldn’t you be thinking about priorities?”
“You are judging me? I can handle my life just fine, thank you.”
“Who are these people you spend so much time with? The ones I’ve met seem pretty questionable.”
Once, at a party with Sylvia in West Hollywood, I eyed the guests gliding around the punch bowl. The women were shrill and caked with glitter and paint and I thought of people I’d heard referred to as the Hollywood glams. Their continual bragging about movie roles and being noticed by big shots and Hollywood insiders exposed them as wanna-bes and hangers-on. I’d noticed a similar superficiality in the people Sylvia brought to the house.
“How dare you criticize my friends?” Sylvia’s voice whipped through the apartment like a released tentacle. “You don’t know them. You’re a fine one to talk. You have no friends. You’re all the time at the library or moping about the house waiting to see what arrangements I make so you can tag along. You’re no one to judge!” She brushed by me holding a tall glass of ginger ale and strode into the bedroom
This was our first full-out argument. The anger in my chest threatened to erupt as she continued her tirade, but when I reached overload a safety valve snapped inside me, the tart retort I’d contrived fizzled, and the irritation faded.
“Just asking a question,” I said in a subdued tone. “Will you be back in time for us to go to the Ahamid Jamal concert on Friday? We have tickets, remember?”
“I don’t know. The Schisgals are driving.” Sylvia reentered the room carrying the overnight case. “I can’t deal with that now. You’ll have to wait.”
With a wave of impatience she set the case on the couch, tucked in an organdy scarf, and snapped the silver latch shut. I was about to ask if I could use the MG to pick up some lacquer pots in Japantown, but backed off. With the air in the room crackling like broken ice it was not the time to ask for favors. I changed the subject.
“Sylvia, your mother called this morning.”
“I’m not speaking to her.”
“What’s going on?”
She gave me a quick look. “I don’t want to talk about it.” And slipping her brocade handbag over her shoulder and snatching the overnight bag, she was gone.
A few days later as I sat at the desk twirling a pencil between my fingers, Syliva entered the living room, towel twisted around her wet hair. The
footsteps stopped. I glanced up. She stood by the desk, her eyes fixed on a letter lying beside my pile of spiral notebooks.
“What is this?” she asked, holding up the letter. I shook my head. “It’s Paul’s letter. Have you been reading it?”
I put down the pencil and looked at her in astonishment.
“I have not! Sylvia, why would you think that?” We stared at each other, then without replying she opened the front closet door and pulled out a long silver jacket.
“Sylvia, what’s with you? You’ve been in a strange mood lately. I don’t know what you’re doing or when you’ll be around. And now you accuse me . . . tell me what’s bothering you.”
“You really want to know?” She’d been heading for the kitchen, but swirled around and planted two feet on the floor, eyes blazing. My heart gave a start, but I felt a simultaneous relief that at last the tension of the last weeks would be broken. “I don’t like your passiveness, the way you take and take. You have no ideas; everything is left to me to arrange, initiate, and you just go along.”
I turned on the chair to face her.
“I have to do everything,” she went on. “When will you start to pull your own weight?” This was delivered in a vitriolic tone I’d never heard from her before.
My cheeks grew hot and I stood up and grabbed the doorknob behind me, as if feeling for an escape route. But I wanted even more to have it out, to puncture the melancholy that had been suffocating me recently. I felt a stubborn anger surge into my throat.
“I admit I’m a learner,” I told her heatedly, “but I have other things to do than dash about from one Hollywood bash to another, full of silly young girls who are convinced their attractiveness will someday, somehow, land them a part in pictures if they can just latch on to one of the powerful men who rule Hollywood.”
“My friends are not all Hollywood types! And you don’t have to go!” She paused. “Have you got anything better?”
“No. Why do I have to have something better?”
“Sometimes you’re hopeless. You lean on me too much. I’ve had to teach you everything—I even had to show you how to sew those skirts you’re always hemming. You stayed too long in that dullsville Midwest. You’re so—so provincial. Maybe you should go back to the life of sunshine suburbia.”
“That’s the last thing I’d do, as you know very well.” The onslaught caught me up short. I felt a familiar bolt of shame weighing in my stomach, making it hard to speak. “I just—I’m not sure what to replace it with just yet. I thought I was replacing it by living here with you.”
I moved into the bedroom, looked out the smeared window pane at the line of bulging garbage cans lined up against a cement wall. Then I walked back to the doorway. “Sylvia, I thought you and I were simpatica. I thought we were both bent on pursuing our art, creating a life for ourselves.”
“I am making a life for myself. I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I’m working towards a degree. What is it exactly you expect? You want me to lead a revolt against conformity? Join the Black Panthers? Produce a novel? I know I should be working harder on my poems and I don’t study nearly enough, but I’m in new territory here. Don’t expect grandiose accomplishments in four months.”
“It’s not that at all. You’ve lost your . . . your center, your drive to create your own circle. You’re satisfied with cruising along in mine. What do I get out of it?”
“How about a roommate who shares your beliefs and keeps you company?”
“Ha! Now that I’m studying with Ada Gar and painting a mural in the lobby of the Santa Monica Hotel, I feel like I’m making a statement. Old acquaintances have started to resurface and people are all of a sudden interested in me. I’m getting what I want. What do you have?”
The first word that came to mind was you, which struck me as pathetic. The truth of her words sent icy curls to my spine and I cringed.
“Nothing,” I replied with what I hoped was an ironic ring. I turned and sat down at the desk, too disturbed to say more.
Five minutes later, tossing the silver jacket over her arm, Sylvia charged out the door without a backward glance. Leaning my chin in my hands I remained immobile on the desk chair feeling the warm tears inch down my cheeks one by one. All I could see, through a blur, was the white wall in front of me stiff and unyielding.
* * *
One weekend as I was leaving the campus library, I ran into Perry. He hadn’t been around for a while, and I perked up at the sight of his tweed jacket and old leather briefcase. At his friendly inquiry I blurted out that things weren’t going well. He looked at me hard. Before I knew it we were sitting in his nearby apartment.
“You look depressed,” he remarked, handing me a cup of coffee and settling into an easy chair.
“Sylvia and I are not getting along. She’s out most of the time, and when she’s not off painting a mural at the Santa Monica Hotel with a group of fellow artists she has other irons in the fire. We don’t have any of the same classes. I rarely see her.” I had Perry’s total attention. “She’s become so critical. Finds fault every time I turn around. And I can’t respond because part of me thinks she’s probably right.”
There! It was out.
Under Perry’s sympathetic gaze I felt a jarring pain that had been submerged until now. He was leaning forward, taking in my every word. He knew Sylvia; he could understand. Perry pressed my hand.
“It’s time for you to develop your own life, undertake projects, set goals, and meet people with mutual interests. Develop your writing. Find what interests and nourishes you. You and Sylvia are cut from different cloths.” Perry leaned back and set his cup on the end table. “Focus on you.”
But though I understood the need to get out from under Sylvia’s influence, I couldn’t bring myself to let go of the life we had forged, a life larger than either one of us experienced on our own. I had finally found an independent home base and that included Sylvia. I espoused our new life—and all those dreams . . .
I sat upright on the couch looking straight at Perry. I felt strangely alert and overcome with a luminous relief. I knew what to do.
When the branches outside the window faded into the blackness, Perry walked me home under a star-streaked night sky.
“Don’t confide in Sylvia,” Perry warned as we walked past a pole lamp that spread a circle of light on the sidewalk. “Leave her out of it. This is about you.”
But I couldn’t do it. As soon as Sylvia returned I blurted out everything. I told her how despondent I’d been and of my talk with Perry. I relayed my fears, my insecurities. I sought her understanding. The two of us could work it out together.
Sylvia listened until I was finished and said she was sorry, but she didn’t really know what I expected of her. If she were critical she couldn’t help it. I should look to myself, do my own thing. She really didn’t have time for this now. She had to be somewhere. Before I could say anything, she left.
My admission of insecurity only served to increase Sylvia’s confidence, and she now assumed an imperious air. I thought over what Perry had said—Sylvia was removed from mundane realities; she floated nymph-like in a web of her own making, never touching the solid earth. Even now she had no real friends she could count on who stood the reliable test of time. Her primary creation was herself and what she represented—the bohemian free spirit. The image was more important than the reality. How did this fit with me? Hadn’t I always considered myself down to earth, no frills, say-it-like-it-is? Had I been thwarting my own nature by falling into her fantasy world of Medusa and the Faerie Queen?
Finally, the whole affair came crashing down in one big explosion. One afternoon, while cruising in the MG through the streets of West Los Angeles, distracted and alone with my musings, I swiped the back end of a pickup truck while turning into a parking lot. The truck was parked
rear-out and didn’t show a mark, but the MG sustained a dent on the front fender. When I returned home I inspected it carefully and saw that it didn’t appear too serious. I figured I would deal with it later as Sylvia was out of town. By the time she returned I’d managed to put it out of my mind, buried, along with thoughts of the impending crash of our relationship. I said nothing.
Of course the damage to the car would be discovered eventually, so my silence was irrational. I just couldn’t bring myself to confess. Any moron could have figured out what devastating results this subterfuge would lead to, but I was blocked. I procrastinated. When at last Sylvia discovered that her beloved MG had been damaged, she flew into a fury. It was inexcusable! How could I wreck the car and say nothing?
I had no defense.
Soon my mother received a letter from Mrs. Newton explaining that I owed $250 for her daughter’s car repair and could they please cover it? Mother shot off a note to me suggesting without reproach that I really need to take care of this. I sent the Newtons a check.
It was all over. I could only withdraw in shame, wondering if enfolded in Sylvia’s territory and directed by her code I had truly become the satellite her mother predicted.
I found a single room twelve blocks away and packed my suitcases. Bags at my feet, I stood in the doorway of our living room where Sylvia’s painting of a strutting Pantalone leered down at me. Unable to find words, scarcely believing our parting was real, I said lamely, “I’ll come for my trunks tomorrow. Well—good-bye.”
“I won’t be here,” Sylvia said, pulling a chiffon scarf from her neck and moving into the kitchen. A moment later I heard a cabinet door click shut. “This makes up for your brother!” she shot out from the other room. She had not forgotten Harold’s distain for what he considered her affectations. “And be sure” she added as she reappeared at the kitchen door, “to let me know when you’re gone.”
A Penny a Kiss Page 24
