by Carole Maso
It was in this studio of this apartment, forty years ago that you would break for absinthe or sherry with my mother, first your lover, then your wife, never taking your eyes off her as she refilled the glasses and stretched her back. “She was always very still.
“How I cried for her abbreviated life!”
You must have loved her very much, Max. Was it hard for you, her terrible sadness? Did you try to put it on canvas, put it at arm’s length, where it was manageable?
One wonders continually how to send an atheist like you to heaven.
It is most inconvenient of him to resist my best efforts.
For all I know he will never rise from this place.
It may seem ridiculous, but I go up to the roof, star map in hand, and look to the heavens. On a clear night it is still possible to see a constellation, a falling star, a lunar eclipse from West Eleventh Street.
“One gives up with a model like her. She was too perfect. She was a painting by Matisse. It was so hard to see her otherwise.”
Max, it is time for wild leeks in West Virginia. Mustard seed in the Napa Valley. Sorrel in New York. You taught me all this. It’s time for fiddleheads, those tender shoots of the ostrich fern in Western Massachusetts.
I think of death breaking like a star in your head.
I am going to write now, because I am a writer. I have already written one novel, published when I was twenty. I have seen it turned into a movie, have won several prestigious awards. I have just returned from an artist colony at the edge of the Berkshires. I went for a month, but I stayed for a year. I tried to write poetry. Had I not seen his death in the form of the rising sun everywhere, I might have stayed forever.
“Because it is too early for peach picking in Western Georgia, the boys who are missing cannot be considered safe. Twelve already murdered in Atlanta.”
Do you denounce Satan?
Yes.
And all his teachings?
Yes.
For all I know you will never ascend into heaven.
I am going to write now. It is a way of telling the truth. Or nearing the truth.
The absolute truth? The literal truth?
Well, yes. Well, no. But something of the whole. Something of what it means to be alive.
I think of the family of father and mother, of two daughters, Candace and Alison, just a word picture for now.
Writing too can keep the world at a distance. One uses “one” instead of “I.” One does not look long enough, or one becomes frightened, fainthearted. One turns flesh too often into words on a page. Turns Ethiopia into a gem on the tongue. The temptation is to make it beautiful or perfect or have it make sense. The temptation is to control things, to make something to help ease the difficulty. One checks oneself as often as possible, but death still whispers in my father’s ear in the form of a beautiful woman just about my age.
But death is not a beautiful woman.
One wants not to have to struggle so much.
For all I know he will never ascend into heaven.
Writing helps, if you are intent on the truth.
She was a painting by Matisse, but she took sleeping pills.
The Truth Is, Max
After tearing the first page from the first book it becomes infinitely easier to tear the next one and then the next one. Now that I am in charge of the disposition of the estate, I have a certain right, an obligation even, to make use of it, especially the impressive art history library. After all I am the only one here, David in Italy and Grey still in Greece.
3
Maggie
My sabbatical starts today, sitting on a pale blue blanket watching these figures gather before me. Notice how the space continually changes as one by one they enter the plane. Someone has rendered each detail with such exactness and precision, the curl on the young girl’s brow, the neck of the man, the gentians at their feet.
The question in my mind persists. It remains as each one comes closer now. Two figures first. What is the unifying motive here? A girl and a man, moving as they are in a landscape of light? How to compose in pyramidal form a girl, a man, and if I include myself, a woman, intimately linked? The issue is complicated by the rock formations, the forest, the meadow, the house. But how I love these questions! Such are my notions of happiness.
Note the graceful lines of the young girl’s body, the folds in her flowing shirt. But the solution cannot be a purely intellectual one—there are other factors. See the tenderness, the eloquence of the gesture between father and daughter, the father tentatively extending his arm, the daughter moving toward him. Now comes a flare of light, almost fire light from the upper quadrant and here is the second girl. Older, a young woman. The man and the young woman embrace, then fall away from each other. Observe the half-smile of the man as he looks toward the viewer. It is at once tender and sad, a little mysterious as if he knows in advance all that is before him. The older daughter in some indefinable way brings movement and vivacity to the scene, but still the man’s look remains unchanged. In contrast to the young woman’s, his expression is a sadder, deeper, a more profound expression than it would carry alone. As the older girl moves off, the pyramid becomes rather wide at the base, wider than deep, and the man is not fully knit into the group and this is an added tension. His form becomes a little vague; he seems to be disappearing into the background even as he moves toward the pyramid’s apex.
To watch these shifting forms fall into order and balance—there is no greater joy than this. Light and dark mingle more freely now with the source of light lowering. To steady the chaos, the quickness with this vision. To stabilize the scene. It is the youngest now who moves. There is such gentleness in her face as she comes nearer and extends her arms, one arm toward the viewer, one toward the wayward man, rescuing him from obscurity, and forcing the viewer to participate. She is the unifying element, standing at the base now, one arm in either direction. The resolution lies somewhere in her wide shoulders, which are immense, much larger than the shoulders of a girl her age could physically, realistically be. And yet it does work. Note the beautiful, soft upturned arm, the skin at the wrist, the delicate fingers as they reach, reach for something.
Yes. But what disturbs? A touch. Sound returns, drowning my thoughts.
“Mom,” the balancing figure says, her arms still outstretched. She comes closer, bends down. She is holding a swirl of green.
“Yes, my love?”
“Look,” she says, tickling me. “Oh look, lady ferns!” she smiles.
4
Alison
Mom and I were talking about lady ferns when Dad came over carrying his tiny tape recorder in one hand and a jug of wine in the other. I was telling her how the lady fern differs from the maidenhair fern and that the fragile fern is bright and green and small and appears in early spring between crevices, often disappearing in summer and reappearing in fall.
“I should have named you Fern!” she laughs.
“Well, well,” Dad smiles, sitting down next to us. “What a sight: two of my lovelies languishing in the grass.” His eyes sort of twinkled when he looked at me, dimmed when he looked at Mom and then brightened again when he looked at me. It had something to do with light and shadow and the angles at which we sat is what Mom would have said, but she didn’t seem to notice.
I got up out of the range of his eyes and walked into the forest. “Look!” I shouted, running back to them.
“What is it, Fern?” Mom asked.
“Fiddleheads!”
“Oh my,” Dad said. He closed his eyes. To be in the Berkshires in time for fiddleheads.
“We’re here in time to watch all the ferns unfurl,” my mother sighed. “Henry, this was one of your finest ideas. To simply pick up and leave. To begin the summer a month early.”
“I should have thought of it sooner,” he whispered in her ear. “Oh my, all these years, Maggie.” Dad took her arm. His eyes were glassy like the lake. I cartwheeled away from them. The meadow was filled
with wildflowers, meadow grass, humming and chirping. The air was so sweet, particularly after New York. “I bet I can cartwheel without stopping all the way to the edge of the forest,” I said. When I got there I plucked more fiddleheads and brought them to my parents who languished, as Dad liked to say, in the tall grass.
He smiled. “Fiddleheads!” he called out like an ice cream man. “Fiddleheads, get your fiddleheads!” he said. “Fiddleheads.”
“The Fiddlebricks, I mean the Philbricks, did you hear, they’ve seen bears this year. A mother and her cub. Just before we got here.”
“What kind of bears?” I asked. “I’ve never seen a bear, I mean, not a bear in the real woods.”
“Don’t you remember the bear, Ali?”
“Oh, Henry. How could she possibly remember?”
“I never saw a bear. I would have remembered. Really. It’s not something I would forget,” I said.
Dad stood up. “Stand up for a minute, Ali, would you?” he said. “I want to see how long it’s been since the last bear. Let’s see how tall you are.”
I came up nearly to the middle of his chest. I was pretty tall, and almost thirteen years old. He hugged me. “The last time I saw a bear,” he said, “you were curled like a fiddlehead inside your mother. How tall are you now?”
“Almost five feet.”
“Nearly five feet ago we saw the bear.” He touched my head. “Long brown hair ago. Seven thousand cartwheels ago.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “Why haven’t I heard about the bear before?”
“I was pregnant with you. We were taking our evening walk around the loop. Candace was with us, she was, oh, about five or six. It was a little misty, very beautiful. Do you remember the light, Henry?” He nodded. “And your father was humming as usual and Candace was dancing as usual and then out of nowhere what crosses our path but a bear, a large brown bear! And it walked right up to your father, and I was behind him and Candace was wrapped around my leg and it looked right at him.”
“I could feel his bear breath,” Dad said. “He was that close. ‘Please let us live,’ I pleaded with the bear, looking into his eyes. ‘Let us live.’ And the oddest damned thing happened. He just turned around and walked into the woods.” Dad kissed me. “What can I say? You’ve unfurled,” he said.
“Five feet ago, seven thousand cartwheels ago, we saw the bear. Oh, Ali,” he said and he squeezed my hand. “Let’s eat. Where’s Candace?”
Mom looked up to Candace’s window. “I see an orange shape,” she said.
Dad pours the wine. Candace shouts something from her window and then comes down from her room on the top floor. Dad raises his glass to her. She runs through the field to us with an armful of lilacs. She takes long deep breaths.
“Oh, it’s simply too beautiful here! And lilacs twice in the same season! Once in New York and once in Massachusetts.”
Dad pours her a glass of wine and smiles. She is his firstborn and he loves her best.
“I’m going to make a costume out of lilacs and pale blue ribbons.” She holds two lilacs up to her breast. Who would not love her best?
“I’ll dance a rite of spring this year.”
Mom opens the picnic basket. Out comes salmon, goat’s cheese, asparagus, pears.
“Right from the asparagus patch,” I say.
“I love the purple tips of asparagus,” Dad says. “And what beautiful fish.”
“I wish the fish didn’t have to come with a face,” Candace says. “It’s staring at me! Look, Dad, I swear.”
“Eat, Candace, you are so thin.”
“Mother,” she says. “I am not one of your Renaissance Madonnas. I have fuchsia hair. I have three holes pierced in my ear.”
Candace begins to sing a bit of a Talking Heads song as if to convince her, but it’s all beyond Mom. Dad sings along.
“Oh, Dad, you haven’t used my voice in one of your compositions for years. You could put it through the synthesizer. It doesn’t have to sound like me. I don’t care, as long as it is me.”
“The asparagus patch was the first place I went when I got here,” I say, eating an asparagus.
“Shh,” Dad says. “There’s a sound we haven’t heard in a while. Listen. The wind blowing through the leaves of the trees.”
“Don’t you think these first leaves look exactly like stars?” Candace says.
“Yes, I do,” I say, wishing I could see more often what Candace sees.
“We’ll bring out the telescope later,” Mom says. “There’re sure to be lots of stars tonight.”
“I want to learn the spring sky,” I say. “Soon we’ll begin to watch for the comet.”
Candace dances away, having eaten her few morsels. “Candace,” Dad says, “come back.” Dad looks sad, like with each step to come Candace will be dancing away from him.
“I’ll dance a rite of spring this year,” she sings.
“Oh, I almost forgot about the weasel walk,” I say. “We’re sure to see bears if we do the weasel walk!”
“The weasel walk?” Dad asks smiling.
“The weasel walk is a way of stalking, like a weasel, so you can get up close to animals like bears. You crouch down and hold your arms close to your body. Then you start moving slowly, watching all the time. You lift one foot and come down on the foot’s outside ball, then you roll to the inside and apply your weight. Then you lift the other foot. Like this.”
“I can do the cakewalk,” Dad says.
“I can do the foxtrot,” Candace smiles.
“What?” I ask tentatively, afraid she’ll make fun of me, which is so often her way.
“Dinner was wonderful,” Dad says.
We lie on the blankets. “I hear a wood thrush,” I say.
“You’re right, Ali,” Dad says with delight. He takes out his pipe and his small tape recorder, which he carries everywhere. “I’ve meant to record the birds,” he says, “for a piece I’m working on.”
“And there’s a robin. And another wood thrush.”
“You’ve got a very sophisticated ear, Ali.”
Candace sighs. “Nature,” she says.
Mom smiles. “Oh, my many-colored-haired daughter.”
“Could we have a little quiet,” Dad says.
We lie in the grass. Dad lights his pipe. “OK,” he says and he begins his tape. We sit and listen to the birds and the wind in the leaves.
It seems as if Dad can see sound, as if it has shapes. He can change bird calls into music.
I lie on my back looking at the clouds. One looks like a fish, one looks like the sad face of a woman and then it turns into some kind of cat.
As the sun goes down it seems hundreds of birds swoop, dive, in the blue-and yellow-flowered grass. “Over there,” I point. “Is that a Wilson’s warbler or a goldfinch?”
Mom runs her hands through Candace’s spiky hair. Their eyes are closed. Dad looks at Mom and Candace, then closes his eyes and listens to the sounds of the world. He turns off the tape and stands up.
“I’ve forgotten something inside,” Dad whispers. “I’ll be back, Ali,” he says, and he gives me a bear hug.
5
Candace
Dad says I’ve got lots of time to decide what I want to do. He says I shouldn’t rule anything out at this point, but I’m already eighteen. He laughs when I say that, but when he was eighteen he had already composed two operas! He calls it “that old Mozart thing.” An andante and allegro at six. A symphony at eleven. Dead at thirty-five. Sometimes I think I’d be happy to have that life. A brilliant flame in the dark, coming from nowhere and as quickly extinguished. Oh, but to burn, however briefly. To leave something behind. A few poems. To compose something so heartbreakingly beautiful, so unbearably beautiful, or dark, or frightening, or hilarious. To be Rainer Werner Fassbinder. To have a vision. To be Byron, to be Keats, or Sylvia Plath.
You wouldn’t want to die young really, a strange voice somewhere inside says.
This summer I’ll cut my h
air off. This summer I’ll be Jeanne d’Arc. I’ll write the script, I’ll play her life. I’ll burn for what I believe.
“I want to know what you know, Vincent van Gogh,” I sing out the window. “Marilyn Monroe. Antonin Artaud.” Maybe I’ll be a singer in a band. I’ll call myself Jeanne Dark. Or a composer—imagine really being a composer. “Igor Stravinsky!” I call out the window. Maybe I’d use a Synclavier like Dad and Laurie Anderson. Dad says one composer in a family is enough though, and he’s probably right.
How gorgeous they look out there sitting in the grass! How happy I am to be here again with them. To roam in the woods, to walk the loop, to find mushrooms. I think it was last year that Dad put a mushroom brush in Mom’s Christmas stocking. And now we’re back again with all the animals, the cows and my favorites, the sheep. I remember when I was little telling all my friends in New York that I had seen sheep. They had never seen sheep, so my best friend Steven said, “I know, I’ll draw you sheep,” and he took out his crayons and drew the most beautiful sheep I’d ever seen, real or not. “Dessine pour moi un bobcat,” I asked him next. “Le chat sauvage.” (Mom was teaching us French that year.) “What do they look like?” Steven asked. There were bobcats, we heard, in the Berkshires, but we had never seen one. They have les yeux jaunes et beaucoup de fur. Thick, I told my friend who drew as I spoke.
And now to be back here again! The ferns, the smell of the earth, the smooth beach, the dark trees. How blatantly sexual everything seems since Pierre, the exchange student last winter. I want to make love all night with the dogs howling, the bobcat’s eyes glowing, the rain pounding. Pierre and I could bring the animals right up to the windows with our passion, their fur pressed up against the screen. The moth wings madly beating. The bobcat clawing deep welts in my brain.
“Candace!” Dad shouts.
“I’m coming!” I shout back.
There he is, pouring wine. There she is, composing the scene. And Alison collecting fiddleheads in a basket. How I love them. How good they are. They endure endless hours of me talking about the future. They keep me near and at the same time bid me farewell. That is what real love is.
