The Misfortunes of Others

by Gloria Dank

  Gabriela’s face went white. “Trashed your studio—!” she said, her voice wavering.

  “Yes. And these goddamned letters. And the phone calls, and the dead flowers. I want to know why. I can’t imagine why, and I want to know. You have Harold, who’s the only thing we ever shared—otherwise you’re a complete stranger to me. I’d like to know what in the world I’ve ever done to you.”

  Gabriela’s face was flushed a deep rose. “Nothing … what … I can’t imagine …!”

  “You’re not a very good actress,” said Weezy witheringly. “I’m sure you’re surprised that I found out who it was, but suffice it to say that I know it’s you. Why did you do it?”

  Gabriela stared at her for a long moment. Her hands had turned into claws, gripping the sides of her chair. She seemed to come to an inner decision.

  “Because I hate you,” she whispered.

  Weezy leaned forward, her cat-eyes narrow. “I know you do, you goddamned bitch. I’m asking you why.”

  “Because Harold still loves you.”

  Weezy expelled her breath in a puff of air. “Harold?” She laughed shakily. “Harold? You really are crazy. Harold hates me. That’s why he moved out, remember?”

  “No,” said Gabriela. “You’re wrong. He still loves you. Everything is Weezy this, Weezy that. Weezy does this better than you, Weezy does that better. Weezy used to like to go on walks, Weezy loved to cook for me, Weezy’s such a great artist, Weezy, Weezy, Weezy!” She stood up abruptly and went over to the window, drawing the lace curtains aside and looking down at the teeming streets below. “It’s too much,” she whispered. “Ever since we ran into you in the restaurant he’s been talking about nothing else. It was bad before, but now …! Weezy is such a great artist, Weezy has such a wonderful talent, Weezy is so sensitive. You should see her paintings, you should see her work, oh well, you couldn’t possibly understand, Gabriela, all you are is a crummy journalist. All you do is work for a yellow rag, your work is nothing, Weezy’s work is everything. She does art! Art!” She shot Weezy a furious look. “I’m nothing and you’re everything, yes, that’s how it is, according to Harold.”

  “Harold never even liked my work when we were together,” said Weezy.

  “That can’t be true.”

  “But it is. He never said a word about it then. I always thought he seemed embarrassed by it.”

  Gabriela shrugged in disbelief.

  “And so all that stuff you said about being a big fan of mine …”

  “Oh, I’d never even seen your paintings. I was repeating what Harold kept telling me.”

  “And the phone calls?”

  Gabriela flushed and looked guilty, like a small child. “Oh … I don’t know. I can’t explain, really … it just made me feel better.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well … I was so curious about you. There was Harold, babbling on about you all the time, and it made me feel so curious … so one day I picked up the phone and dialed your number. When you answered, I couldn’t think of anything at all to say, so I didn’t talk. I just waited. It made me feel scared, but sort of … I don’t know … relieved, somehow. That I had finally heard you. After that, I would call every so often, just to kind of … I don’t know …” Speech failed her. She came back and sat down on the sofa, tucking her skirt neatly under her legs.

  “Frighten me?”

  Gabriela waved a hand helplessly in the air. “I don’t know. Not really. Just to keep in touch. It made me feel better, that’s all. I mean, I knew all about you and you didn’t know anything about me, and this was a way of—of keeping the balance, I guess.”

  “I see.”

  “But then I called and some man answered—was that you?” she asked Snooky.

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Oh. Well, somebody answered, and I guess you know what happened. He sat on the line as long as I did, and didn’t say anything either, and … well, it kind of freaked me out. After that I figured I better not call anymore. You might have put a tracer on the line or something. I mean, I had been careful not to call too often, because I didn’t want to get caught.”

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” said Weezy. “Tell me something. How’d you get my number in the first place? Harold sure as hell didn’t have it.”

  “Harold? Oh, no. I couldn’t have asked him anyway. It was that article, you know. The one in the Times. It said where you were living, so I called directory assistance and got your number.”

  “I see. So then, after you met me in the restaurant …”

  “I made up an excuse to see your paintings. I had to see what Harold was talking about. I pretended I was going to do an article on you. And you bought it. Pitiful. Did you really think I’d do an article on Harold’s ex?” She shook her head. “I had to see what you were doing, that was all, those famous paintings. Your wonderful talent.”

  “My brilliant career,” Weezy said bitterly.

  “Yes.”

  “And the lovely bouquet of flowers?”

  Gabriela flushed again. “Oh, well … actually, Harold gave them to me for my birthday. I mean, when they were new. I kept them for weeks. I couldn’t bear to throw them out. He used to tease me about it whenever he saw them here. ‘Why are you keeping that bouquet?’ he used to say. ‘Throw it out, I’ll buy you another if you like it that much.’ You know, that’s how he is. Generous.”

  “A prince among men,” said Snooky.

  Gabriela looked over at him in a puzzled way, as if she was having trouble placing him. “Yes. Well, anyway … I called you up for that interview, and when Harold heard about it he hated the idea. He told me he didn’t like the two of us getting friendly. I suppose nobody likes their girlfriend and their ex getting together. But I said that if you were so talented, then you should be getting more publicity, and he shut up after that. After a few days he seemed to … I don’t know, to change his mind, I guess. We had dinner one night, and he spent the whole time talking about how wonderful an artist you are, and that’s when I decided to send you the flowers.”

  “I see.” Weezy tilted her head to the window and lapsed into a contemplative silence.

  Snooky leaned forward. “You used a word processor to address the label.”

  “Yes. Yes, I did. I have a printer here.”

  “Why didn’t you use it for those letters you sent? It’s a hell of a lot easier than sticking on all those gold letters.”

  “Oh,” said Gabriela. “I don’t know. I thought maybe printers could be traced. I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure. So I used the gold letters. I thought it would be safer.”

  “Okay,” said Snooky. “So you came up for the interview after that. What did you think of her work when you finally saw it?”

  Gabriela paused. She lifted one hand and began to chew on a fingernail. “I thought it was good. I thought … I thought it was wonderful. Harold was right. It was everything he had said. I … I couldn’t get over it, it made me want to kill you. It’d be one thing if he was just making it up, but when I saw the paintings—!” She shrugged. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Apparently you managed to think of something,” Weezy said in a low voice. “You came up and slashed them.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Yes.” Her voice was faint. She gave Weezy a furtive, guilty glance. “Yes. I … I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry? That’s it? I’m sorry?”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I came up to talk to you,” Gabriela said, lifting her hands helplessly. “Just to talk. I don’t even know what about. I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I was sort of … well … obsessed. I kept thinking about you, and Harold kept talking about you, and I felt like I had to talk to you myself or go crazy. I drove up one day on an impulse. I got in the car to do some shopping, and when I got out of the city I just kept going. When I got there you weren’t home, but when I tried the front door, it opened. I figured I’d go in
and wait for you. I thought I’d get another look at your paintings. So I went into your studio and started looking around. And … and I don’t know …” Her voice trailed off. “I saw one painting … of a girl … I don’t know, all of a sudden I went crazy, I guess. I couldn’t stand it. I had this penknife I carry in my handbag … I took it out and I … I …”

  “You pitiful moron,” said Weezy. “That painting wasn’t even mine. It was one of my students’. Remember I told you at the interview that they were off to one side? I asked you if I could include them in the photos? Don’t you remember?”

  Gabriela looked frightened. She lifted one hand to brush a lock of hair off her face. “No … no, I don’t remember. I wasn’t really listening during the interview. I was … I was looking at you and at the paintings.”

  “She destroyed my studio and my exhibit because of Elmo’s painting,” Weezy said to Snooky, almost matter-of-factly. “I told you he was better than me.”

  “No, no, that’s not true.”

  “Oh, yes it is. This proves it.” She turned back to Gabriela. “I have another student whose paintings were the only ones you didn’t touch. Why was that?”

  Gabriela looked at her blankly. “What?”

  “One of my students’ paintings. They were stacked together in the far right-hand corner, away from the others.”

  Gabriela shook her head. “I don’t remember. I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

  “All right. What about the letters?”

  “After … after I …” she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Go on.”

  “Yes, I … I ran out and drove away. I didn’t think anybody had seen me, but you never know, especially in a small town like that. I waited, but you never got in touch, so I figured … well, I figured you didn’t know who it was. I felt so guilty and crazy and horrified, I didn’t know what to do. But then Harold kept on talking about you. I thought getting rid of your paintings would make me feel … I don’t know, different, but it didn’t. One day at work I called up the gallery to make sure they knew there wouldn’t be an exhibit. The owner didn’t seem to know that anything was wrong. And I got scared … I thought maybe there were more … maybe I hadn’t gotten all of them … maybe …” Her voice trailed away again. “So I started writing the letters. It made me feel good for a while, but not for long. Nothing made me feel good. Nothing worked. And now I feel … just … wretched.” She hung her head and put her hands in her lap, like a guilty child. “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I really am sorry. I … I didn’t think of you as … as real.”

  “What did you think of me as?” asked Weezy, watching her. “Styrofoam? Insensate? With no feelings?”

  “You were just Harold’s ex, that’s all, period. That’s all.”

  “Harold’s ex? That makes me nonhuman?”

  Gabriela shrugged hopelessly.

  “You stupid idiot,” Weezy said, emphasizing every word. “You stupid idiot. You’re blaming me for what that moron Harold is doing. He used to try it with me, about his ex-wife. Stacey was this, Stacey was that. Just what you’re describing to me. Stacey was perfect, I was less than nothing. The thing is, I never blamed Stacey, I blamed myself. Which makes three stupid women. Stacey for marrying him, me for blaming myself when he talked about her, you for blaming me. And so far nobody’s blamed Harold.”

  Gabriela began to cry.

  “But at least I never wrote Stacey any disgusting letters or tore up her stationery store down in the Village,” said Weezy. “You need help. You need some kind of help I’m not qualified to give you. You know, if I had been home that time that you came up, I could have told you about Stacey.”

  Gabriela covered her eyes and began to sob.

  “I hope you feel bad.”

  “I do, I do,” she wailed, rocking back and forth.

  “I’ve been living in fear ever since this started. Keep the letters, it’ll remind you what you’ve done to me. Come on, Snooky, we’re leaving.”

  They stood up and went to the door. Gabriela followed them, her hands weaving in the air in front of her face, as if she had suddenly gone blind.

  As they left, she reached out and grabbed Weezy’s arm in a clawlike grip.

  “Are you … are you going to tell Harold?” she whispered, in a choked voice.

  Weezy shook her arm free irritably. “No. Let go of me.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  And she shut the door in Gabriela’s surprised, tearful, anguished face.

  On the way back to Ridgewood on the train, Weezy sat looking out at the blue distance. Trees ran past, skimming over the ground, balancing with their branches held out like tightrope walkers. The train chugged and rattled its way north.

  Snooky put an arm around her shoulders. “Well?”

  “Well?”

  “What do you think of that little interview?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It was painful and disgusting and horrible, of course, but in a way … well, in a way I found it gratifying. That’s an awful thing to say, I guess.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Here I’ve been killing myself over Harold, feeling so humiliated and everything, and all the time he was holding me up as a paragon of virtue to his next girlfriend. When he did that to me about Stacey I didn’t realize it was a pattern. I just thought she was great and I was awful.”

  “Harold sounds like quite a gem. As I told you in the beginning.”

  “Yes, so you did.”

  “And may I mention that I also suggested all along that Gabriela might be jealous of you. I said that Harold might be talking about you. I said it was a possibility.”

  “Well, you were right. As usual, nobody paid any attention to you at all, but you were right.” Weezy patted his hand.

  “How do you think the students will take the news?”

  “Well, I can’t wait to tell Elmo about ‘Girl in White,’ how it triggered her into a destructive frenzy. He’ll be absolutely furious, but on the other hand, it’ll appeal to his enormous ego. I’m sure he can easily imagine someone going nuts over his work.” She laughed softly.

  “And Alice?”

  “Poor Alice, how we all maligned her. She’s touchy and paranoid and horrible, but not as horrible as somebody else I could mention. It’s such a relief to know my instincts were right all along, it wasn’t her.”

  “You did say that.” He gave her shoulders a squeeze.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “We still don’t know who messed up her paintbox.”

  “Well, now that I know that it’s not the same person who did everything else, I have a very good idea who it was.”

  “You do?”

  “Uh-huh.” She chewed her lip.

  “Want to tell me?”

  “Let me make sure first.”

  “Okay,” said Snooky. “So you’re not too upset?”

  “Well, I’m upset, naturally I’m upset. I mean, I’ve been through hell over this. It’s been awful. I had to cancel my class and go away for months because of it.”

  “That wasn’t so bad.”

  “No, no. But you know what I mean. I hated feeling like I was running from something. Like I was afraid to go home.”

  “Yes.”

  “And those letters and everything …!” She shuddered. “Harold got what he deserved, he really did. He found himself a real winner this time.”

  “Harold,” said Snooky, “is an idiot. A stupid, insensitive, loutish idiot who knows nothing about women. A man who gave up the chance of a lifetime when he broke up with you.”

  Weezy smiled lazily and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s nice. I don’t get to hear the word ‘loutish’ nearly often enough these days.”

  “The English language is going down the drain. Such a rich, varied vocabulary, and no one uses it anymore.”

  They rode for a while in comfortable silence.

  “So it doesn’t look
like the article in People magazine will be forthcoming,” said Snooky. “Are you devastated?”

  “Oh, no. Of course I’d like it, but I don’t need it. And I’m already thinking that I might try to do something new for the Genuardi Gallery next year, instead of duplicating the paintings that were ruined. I think I’ll try something different … a whole new look … something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I didn’t have the energy before …” She turned back to the window in absorption, her eyes wide and unseeing.

  “That’s good,” he said, but she was no longer listening. She was watching a carousel of forms and colors rotating gently inside her head.

  Weezy called up her students on the phone and told them that she was teaching again. At the beginning of the first class, she announced that the person who had wrecked the studio had been caught, and that they were all off the hook.

  “For which I hope you’ll be suitably grateful,” she said. “And, by the way, Alice’s paintings were simply overlooked, that’s all. The person who did this never met any of you. I don’t want to go into this, but it’s someone who knows me and nobody else.”

  There were expressions of relief, and a palpable easing of tension in the room. Alice, in particular, looked smug. “I told you it wasn’t me.”

  “So you did, my dear.”

  The class went well; everyone was on their best behavior. Mrs. Castor said to Weezy, “You look happy again.”

  “I am, thanks.”

  “Enjoyed your vacation?”

  “More than I can say. Snooky told me it was your idea for us to get away from here. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You were looking tired,” said the old lady. “I’m glad to see you looking so well now.”

  After class, Weezy asked Elmo to follow her into the living room for a private chat. He stood with his arms folded, surveying her quizzically. “Yes?”

  “Elmo, you shithead,” she said affably. “Why did you mess up Alice’s stuff?”

  He did not argue. “How’d you find out?”

  “As soon as I figured out that somebody else had done the major damage, it was clear to me that only you would have the nerve to do that to Alice. I know you pretty well.”