The bus now pulled up in front of the building, a long early Victorian three-winged former nursing home flanking a green field. I got off, repositioning my funky blue plastic glasses on my nose, trying not to worry that my black “trousers”/red “jumper” combo was too casual. That morning, after dabbing blush across my face, hoping I looked like a calculated professional rather than an aging clown, I’d examined my wardrobe to find clothes spotted with tea bruises and pen leaks, my bas-couture collection like a Jackson Pollock. Now I rolled up my sleeves to cover a stray thread. I adjusted my small designer watch, a gift from Nigel, with silvery hands that marauded around its surface, each following its own protocol, reminding me that as we age, each second is a shorter percentage of our existence, that time passes more quickly with each tick. I ran my hands through my boy-short hair, grateful I’d recently dyed it a shocking cadmium.
I knocked at the curatorial office, three sharp staccato motions. I. Am. Here.
The green door was familiar. I’d found this museum on my first trip to London during college and was smitten. It was arranged as a long series of living rooms, with one chronological path you could walk through, as if you were visiting the homes of wealthy people since the Middle Ages. Playing out a version of my childhood fantasies of living in Montreal’s suburban west, I imagined myself in a slick, wealthy home in 1725, welcoming guests for our pheasant bleating competition, donning my finest ruff.
“Judith,” Charlotte said as she opened the door. “Welcome back.”
Indeed, I’d come to this very office (with my intellectual name) to do research for my undergrad thesis on scientific color theory in Victorian interior decoration, which I now clutched in my shvitzy arms. I’d ended up basing my study on the museum’s 1880s period room—bright yellow walls, glassed-in kitsch flowers, heaps of objets, and wild red-and-green carpets—which was, to contemporary taste, the ugliest. But that’s what had attracted me. Why did those Victorians love clutter and the grotesque?
“Thank you, Ms. Williams,” I said, conscious of every label. The day before I’d tried to open a bank account and the space for “title,” which in the US comprised “Mr., Mrs., or Ms.,” included over fifty choices. “Yes, that’s Dowager Lady Batalion,” I’d wanted to say, picturing myself with a fox daintily draped around my neck.
“Call me Charlotte,” she chuckled. She was wearing jeans.
I was directed to the table in the middle of the office, stacked with piles of books, wallpaper samples, and fake Jacobean meat platters. “Do you care for a coffee?”
“Sure,” I said right away, immediately regretting it, hearing my North American drawl (shewer) stand out next to her crisp vocalizations. At Harvard they’d told us never to accept drinks at a professional interview. But I was so thirsty. And hungry. And, free coffee. I could feel myself crumbling. “Sorry,” I mumbled, just in case.
Charlotte brought several worn mugs of instant to the table and we were soon joined by Margaret, the gesticulating “Keeper of Curatorial Services,” and James, her second-in-command who was leaving his post next week.
Now that I’d forced Charlotte to brew, I’d better drink up. I picked up my coffee carefully, not sure if raising my pinkie was over the top, and tried to get it to my lips in an elegant swoop. I’d just made it, when the questioning began.
“Tell us about your interest in Victorian design,” Margaret said, her arms steady at attention, her eyes slit accusingly as if she could peer right through my veneer.
I took a deep breath before beginning my rehearsed speech about my unbridled lust for living room research. “I’m interested in the relative experience of aesthetic pleasure. I wrote my thesis on why Victorians used such clashing colors in their drawing rooms. The very word ‘drawing,’ by the way, implies action and cover—it’s a space of hidden contradictions. Objects were kept as a sign of wealth, to associate the home with a museum. There was a reason for the mess!” There must be a reason I come from a mess too.
“Interesting,” James said flatly, Englishly, which meant I had no idea if he found it interesting. “And what experience do you have doing research?”
This I could do: I’d worked for a photographer who shot abandoned homes and psychoanalysts’ consulting rooms; for an art historian who wrote about rococo design. I explained I was enrolled in an MA, leading to a PhD, on domestic representations in art, reading Freud, Bachelard, Kristeva, anyone who contemplated how the body and psyche related to intimate space. Was it more comfortable to live in a room dominated by windows, where inhabitants looked out (classic subject/object) or ones that were designed with “theater box” areas so everyone looked at one another (intersubject/subject)? Was the contemporary home a site of comfort or captivity? Feminist or patriarchal? A signifier of capitalism or the essence of the communal? Was privacy merely a theoretical construct or a concrete ideal? I worked myself into a Sorbonnish frenzy.
“I love this museum,” I crescendoed. I really did. I had no idea where else I could be employed—this was a rare, perfect match. Most of my Harvard friends lived off their parents, or with them, as they figured out their next steps, but I had no fallback plan. I had to run before I knew what steps I should be taking. I had to run. “I’m obsessed with domestic interiors.” Finally I paused, making eye contact with all three, ready for approval, a round of applause.
Margaret scratched her head.
Charlotte took a sip of her coffee.
James opened his mouth. To cough.
A sweat bead oozed from my hairline. My brain was my everything. I’d always depended on being organized, doing my homework, following rules, the equations that came easily to me and guided me out of messes. I fondled the pages of my damp thesis. “Here are my main theoretical points:
“1. Walls are thick, not mere boundaries and surfaces, but whole worlds unto themselves, with layers of ins and outs.
“2. The home is a site of self, of subjectivity, deeply aligned with the psyche, an externalization of the mind.
“3. Interiors mirror each other—a person creates a room, and a room creates its inhabitants. It is not so much that we hang stuff on our walls, but that our walls press into us, make their marks on our personalities.
“4. The home is a site of relationships, which are formed by and create the space they occur in.”
I couldn’t stop. “I’ve even studied the design of laboratories, showing how spaces mold scientific ideas. I want nothing more than to study the ways living rooms create and reflect the people inside them.”
Nothing.
I put my mug down and grabbed its handle to help me keep my composure. They didn’t like me. It was clear: I would never fit in with this institution, with its grounded history, its sense of place. They probably wanted to hire a lord’s daughter whose dining experience surpassed fake ramen à la cheddar.
Margaret finally cleared her throat. Then she spoke: “It was nice to meet you.”
“Indeed,” said James, not missing a beat.
But then. He smiled.
Charlotte grinned too.
Were they being polite? British?
I got up and reached for my coat. Keep it elegant, Judy, I reminded myself.
I swiftly, deftly, swung it from the back of the chair, right onto my arm. I grinned.
Then I attempted to slip in my left arm and instead hit my sleeve across the whole range of coffee cups, sending brown liquid splashing across the table like a mudslide.
“I’m so sorry,” I barely stammered out, as each of them jumped back, pulled books with them, then clambered around looking for tissue. There it was: my whole attempt at fitting in, my cool museum career, my ability to eat warm food, flushed down the filter. “So sorry.”
“Don’t worry, Judith,” James said, grabbing some paper towels. “All curators are, at heart, klutzes.”
He laughed. Then, Margaret and Charlotte did t
oo. I launched into goofy hysterics.
(I did not yet know that my eccentric ungainliness made the English more comfortable than my showing off about research skills or demonstrating any emotion.)
Charlotte and James bashed hands as they tried to wipe my spill. The coffee streamed into ravines right in front of a midcentury staircase mock-up. I reached for a tissue and the whole box fell to the floor.
“Can you start on Monday?” Margaret asked.
“I can start anytime,” I answered, skipping to the door. I took a full, deep breath. They had used the word “klutz.” And they were klutzes too. Maybe all people obsessed with beauty felt they couldn’t do it, be it. Maybe inside they all felt like me.
• • •
“WHEN IN ROME,” I said, chugging my half-pint. I stared at Evan across the pub table, noting his chiseled features, strong arms, dark eyes firmly stuck in their sockets. In the dance class, all I’d noticed was that he was older, sweaty. Then again, I’d been distracted. Though I loved dance, enrolling in Modern as soon as I could afford it, dreaming of pirouetting like a paper towel pulled off its roll, today’s class was too hard. My limbs didn’t cooperate; I more or less did the running-man across the room. I was hoping no one had noticed I even existed, so when Lucy invited me for a drink afterward, I surprised myself by accepting.
“The English need liquor just to chat,” Evan agreed, smiling. “It’s an intersubjective conundrum.” He was a professor. Sociology. He’d been in London for five years. “So glad you also see it that way,” he added in his New York patter.
“The reason Brits have such crazy flavored chips—beef bourguignon, prawn and chives—is because, along with their pints, that’s their dinner,” I played along. “By the way, that’s quite an accent. House of Windsor or Saxe-Coburg?”
He laughed. His dark eyes met mine. He seemed to know exactly what he was looking at. “I’m cooking tonight.” He lived a few blocks away. “Couscous. Come.”
“OK,” I chirped without thinking, shocking myself again. Normally a planner, I preferred to enter social engagements with prepared conversation. That evening, I didn’t even worry that I had no change of clothes, or that I’d be dining with people who thought I possessed the physical grace of a wounded hyena. Including the teacher, Honor, who was giggling too loudly, like a teenager, and, I noticed, sporadically touching Evan’s arm.
His apartment—the first person I knew who lived alone—was centered on a long, cool hallway ending in a living room covered in rugs and hanging plants. Honor climbed onto a yoga ball, flicked her blond hair, tensed her slender spiderlike limbs, and bounced after Evan to the kitchen. She was a fortysomething divorcée with three kids—could she really be flirting like that? I coughed to cover up my stomach growls.
Evan cooked and I realized how starving I was; that morning I’d found a mouse nonchalantly hanging out in my bag of budget bagels. The smell of garlic, now, flirted its way into the fabric of my blue tank top. Evan came in to pour wine and I could feel him watch me as I examined his sophisticated bookshelf. His stare hit my side like a warm spotlight, nestling into my round hips. I did not look back. Honor’s laugh got louder.
He served me first and kept seasoning my sauce with parsley that he’d cultivated in his kitchen. I tried to eat slowly, ladylike. “One day I’ll teach you to roast peppers,” he whispered. “And maybe even my secret decanting technique.” I blushed bright red.
Evan insisted on walking me home. My blood raced. We were trudging up the hill between our flats, his steps confident and vigorous, when I saw Honor hanging from the back of the open bus, waving frantically. He likes ME, I wanted to call out, realizing it was true. I’m young, sexy, intellectual, unencumbered. Fresh. But was I ready? I flashed to Peter’s aloofness, which had made me feel inadequate, to Nigel’s overconcern, which had made me feel suffocated, to how I then sped through a delayed adolescence, bouncing between men’s beds as I bounced between my own beds, parading between dorms, couches, hostels, cities. Was I ready to not-run?
Evan kissed me in my living room. “Let’s do this again,” he said before he left.
That night, I marveled at my minimalist room that I was sure would impress him, at the clean order of my new life—school, job, fling: check—when suddenly I noticed my bare wrist. I’d lost my one artsy adornment. What would I do without my timepiece? But then, touching my exposed arm, I realized it felt free, uncuffed. I could live without the watch. I could jump in, let someone care for me.
• • •
THAT EVENING OF letting-go quickly developed into a relationship. I spent weekends at Evan’s, curled up like a comma in his warm side. He taught me how to make coffee from a cafetière with a twist of lemon (cuts the richness) and the meaning of cotton thread counts. He lectured to me on the philosophy of ceramic dishes, the ways that liquids coated the edges, protecting their surfaces from hidden harsh acids. I nodded nervously, exposed to a secret universe that I’d been denied access to for so long.
“You need a separate area for chopping raw meat,” he explained the basics. “It’s best to hang pots.” His face traced his vigorous thinking; his pupils darted side to side.
“So raw meat and pots each get their own wings,” I repeated, drying plates with the circular motion he’d shown me, thinking of Mom’s kitchen, the repository for moldy cereal and obsolete telephones which now, alongside aged pastries, stockpiled pens and notebooks, blended over into the den’s new collection of cassette tapes that included music copied from CDs she borrowed from the library and recordings of conversations with lawyers.
“It’s really quite perplexing that you don’t know anything about cooking.”
“Girl power,” I said, flexing my drying-arm’s muscles. “I’m a third-wave, microwave kind of feminist.” It was easy to play my lack of cuisine cool as part of my urban academic identity, rather than admit that my domestic deficiencies made me feel like less of a woman, not more of a feminist.
A couple of months into our affair, Evan decided he wanted to move somewhere more residential, permanent. I gleefully accompanied him on reconnaissance missions, checking out neighborhoods and garden flats (he insisted on growing his own radishes), happy to be involved in such an important domestic decision. I took this as a sign of Evan’s commitment, but also, respect for my taste. We took long walks, examining architectural quirks and stopping at ethnic supermarkets where he showed me the difference between portobello and porcini mushrooms, paprika and cayenne pepper. I felt proud to be beside someone who knew so much, grateful that he was sharing his knowledge, as if it confirmed that I was worth it, that I too, one day, when I understood it, or could afford it, would raise herbs.
• • •
MEANWHILE, MY JOB at the British museum of living rooms was also progressing well. The museum’s crammed timeline of period rooms reminded me of England, a nation poor in space, rich in time; the opposite of America. I loved walking through these reception areas consecutively, from the somber 1600s with its boxy chairs, through the dreaded Victorian yellow velvet wallpapers, 1960s gloriously crisp-edged Scandinavian-inspired wooden minimalism, and the 1990s loft conversion with blue halogen lights and see-through kettles. I imagined myself in these spaces, passing out cigarettes in our Aesthetic gay salon, or partying like it was 1599 with a flagon of mead. All of this fantasy connected through a straight hall, pristine, white. A clear path.
My role was “researcher” for a special exhibition of paintings of modern living rooms, or rather upper – to upper-middle-class domestic English urban living rooms from 1603 to 2001, to be Britishly precise. I spent full days in that office with its pre–Industrial Revolution conditions (it was wet and windy inside) trawling through photo archives and museum Web sites, poring over books of paintings by dead artists with names like Boodles Caldercott, examining the living rooms of Samuel Richardson and Thomas Carlyle (who, in his portrait, seemed to be kicking his c
at), my eyes grazing pictures of fireplaces covered in ceramics, austere seventeenth-century tea services, or, more contemporary, an open plan flat with surreal floating fish. The detective work was intense: what was the strict definition of a middle-class, urban living room?
Oh, the fights this aroused. Weekly, I proudly, albeit nervously, presented my findings to my superiors. Sitting around refurbished tables, sipping cappuccinos (which had just hit England), the top echelon of curators engaged in hours of debate. Margaret, whose desk was invisible under a mudslide of papers; Emily, a sassy American who’d adopted a British accent and ran the marketing department; Edith, the octogenarian world-class design specialist who angled for the museum to buy her family’s heirlooms; and Neville, the Oxbridge director, who managed to sustain an air of aloof British masculinity despite the fact that he spent his days trading in cutlery—would all go at it. They fought vehemently about whether the hearths were urban (“Was Bexley-on-the-Flume a city or suburb in 1747?”) and whether these chambers were indeed living rooms (“But Sickert sometimes painted the nude teenage girls in his studio . . .”). After hours of this, Margaret would pull me aside and ask me to ring the author of an academic tome on Regency wallpapers to make sure that what he wrote in his book was right.
“But he wrote it in his book,” I’d say, trying to get out of making yet another shameful call. “That’s usually because he thinks it’s right.”
White Walls Page 12
