What Could Be Saved

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  “What should I do?” Laura heard herself say.

  “Don’t ask me,” shouted the professor, enraged again. “Stop listening to other people. Stop looking at other people looking at your work. Stop accepting praise. Stop telling yourself it’s good enough. You look at your work. You decide.” She flung her hand back at the canvas. “And get this out of my sight.”

  For the rest of that day and the next, it was as though Laura had been deafened by a bomb blast; she could barely hear anything through the ringing in her ears. On Sunday morning, when the rates were low, she called her boyfriend, Adam, who’d graduated and moved to Washington to attend law school the year before.

  “I think I’m going to quit school,” she said.

  “You can do it,” he said, sounding sleepy. “If I can make it through torts—”

  “It’s not because it’s hard,” said Laura. “It’s because it’s bullshit. I’ve been making bullshit.”

  “Okay,” said Adam, after a slight pause. “But how will dropping out help with that?”

  “I need to get away from here,” she said. She couldn’t explain the urgency she felt—the professor had rung a bell inside Laura that had not stopped chiming since: it was too long already that she’d been wasting precious time.

  “So, what then?” said Adam again, sounding a little more awake. “Are you going to look for an apartment?” Always the first concern of a New Yorker: real estate.

  “I was thinking of coming to Washington,” Laura said.

  A long pause.

  They’d been drifting apart despite the ease of the no-reservations-needed, twenty-nine-dollar Eastern Shuttle. Lately, Laura had begun to suspect that their relationship was fueled by negatives, inertia and fear of AIDS, more than by true love.

  “Leaving New York?” he said. “Isn’t that basically giving up your career?”

  “People make art everywhere,” said Laura. “DC is home. And it’s away from all of this.” She made a gesture that he couldn’t see, that took in the dorm, the school, the whole island of Manhattan.

  “It seems a drastic response to one nasty professor.”

  “It’s not because of her,” said Laura, and then reconsidered. “Well, it is, actually.”

  “Just as long as you aren’t doing it for me.” Hard, cautious.

  “I’m not doing it for you,” said Laura.

  A beat of silence, then “Okay,” he said. His voice warmed. “It would be nice to see you all the time.” Suddenly expansive, as though her assurance had uncorked a river of affection, he went on, “You could live here. Maybe it would help me eat better. I’m a terrible cook.” As if Laura weren’t a terrible cook herself.

  Laura quit college and moved back to Washington. She didn’t move in with Adam, who didn’t repeat his invitation; she hadn’t taken it as sincere the first time. She went instead to the Tudor, which was standing empty, and set up a studio in the walk-out basement. She cleaned the cobwebby mullioned windows of the big playroom where she’d had middle-school slumber parties, set her easel in the light, and stopped answering the phone to Beatrice’s angry diatribes.

  The next few months were like a slow rehabilitation for Laura, unhobbling her instincts, learning to ignore the criticisms that wailed from her memory: she didn’t need to use so much paint; and those colors! They were too violent, too blatant; they robbed her work of finesse. Over time, she saw that by finesse the professors had meant caution, they meant femininity, they meant she ought to dab and dottle, make something pastel and pretty. She caught herself again and again, following a path that had been carved by her desire to please. She gritted her teeth and painted on. When darkness fell, she turned on the clamp lights.

  The work enveloped her completely, an amniotic sac. It did not feel like loneliness. She saw Adam most weekends but not all, and occasionally met a friend for lunch or dinner, the rest of the time eating from tins or making sandwiches. It was a golden, selfish time: no one to report to, few bills to pay, no real responsibilities apart from finding her way through the paint.

  When Genevieve returned to the Tudor, she seemed only mildly surprised to find Laura there. She listened without alarm to Laura’s explanation, descended into the basement to inspect the studio, commented merely You need better light—and much better ventilation if you insist on oils before heading upstairs to unpack.

  So maybe Sullivan was right, thought Laura, sleepless, thirty-three years later. She’d gone wrong when she’d tried to please others, when she thought too much about what they might want. Only selfishness and isolation had allowed her to break through. But selfishness had probably also been the thing that ended her marriage, that had taken her alone to Bangkok, been the final straw in her always-contentious relationship with her sister. She didn’t know how other artists managed their personal lives. As her career had climbed, she’d connected with some, had done some invigorating collaborations, but that wasn’t exactly friendship.

  She had kept in sporadic touch with her college roommate Allison, who’d been a brilliant sculptor but whose career had bumped along in obscurity. I have kids, Allison had said the last time she and Laura had talked. The days just—go. That whole conversation had been skew, two monologues without any shared points. Allison hadn’t seemed envious of Laura, or regretful. She’d seemed happy. Still, Laura had judged her, thinking after they’d hung up Such a waste.

  Sullivan was wrong, Laura realized, turning over in her bed, punching her pillow into shape. She was already an asshole. No epiphany there.

  * * *

  The next day, three weeks after being admitted to the hospital, Philip woke up.

  1972

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  IT HAD been incredibly stupid, Genevieve realized later, to take him to the wat. The place was always thronged, but only with Thai and tourists; she didn’t think she’d see anyone she knew. The truth was that Genevieve hadn’t been thinking at all. She’d been operating in a bubble of delusion, feeling invincible. Being out with Maxwell in public was exciting, the tension like a twanging cord between them.

  “Pay attention,” she scolded, moving away as Max stepped up close behind her. “Be respectful. This is the most important Buddha in Thailand.”

  “What, this fellow?” he said, squinting up at the statue poised at the top of its pedestal, its jeweled headpiece as tall as itself. “There’s a dozen bigger Buddhas within a mile.”

  “This fellow, as you call him,” said Genevieve, “is so important that only royalty may touch him. The king himself performs the costume change each season.”

  “Is he actually made of emerald?”

  “Maybe jade,” she said. “Or green jasper. No one will risk damaging him by testing.” She put her head back, to look up at the little figure. He was wearing his summer decoration, her personal favorite, with the gold flame shapes at the shoulders and knees. “According to legend, he’s the first known image of Buddha.” They had stopped too long; a crowd was massing politely behind them. They moved away while she told Max the story: how the statue had been made by a saint with help from the god Vishnu himself, been fought over by various kingdoms for hundreds of years, and then disappeared until the fifteenth century, when a lightning strike on a Chiang Rai temple severed a lump of stucco from the roof. The crude statue that fell to the ground was taken inside and kept with other minor works until some months later, when the plaster nose began to crumble away and the glowing green peeked through. “They say he’s performed miracles.”

  “Speaking of which,” Max said. They were in a quiet corner; she turned toward him. “Abracadabra.”

  He produced a silk pouch from an internal pocket. She took it, loosened the drawstring, drew out a tiny gold Buddha on a delicate chain.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. The Buddha’s scalp was studded with little bumps and his eyes were closed, his lips turned upward at the corners. One hand was on his knee and the other was raised, palm out: the pose of the Protection Buddha.

&n
bsp; Max took it from her. “Let me put it on.” The chain made a featherweight against her skin. He put his nose to her neck. “You smell nice.”

  “This is a holy place.” But she smiled as she protested, angling her head away. Between the lashes of her slitted eyes she saw a familiar face across the room and froze. She brought her head to upright and took a giant step forward, away from Maxwell.

  “What?” he said.

  “The Ladies,” she said. She thought fast. “We’ll have to say hello.”

  They went over to the group of four women, three of whom greeted her with unalloyed welcome. But as Irene turned to her, Genevieve’s heart sank; both the artificial slowness of the turn and the exaggerated surprise on Irene’s face made it clear that she had seen Maxwell Dawson nuzzling Genevieve from across the room.

  “I’m giving Mr. Dawson the penny tour of Bangkok,” said Genevieve, her voice tinny and false in her own ears. “Mr. Dawson, you remember Mrs. Duncan, Mrs. Pettis, Mrs. Martelli, Mrs. Green.”

  “So nice to see you all again,” said Max.

  “We’re here doing homework,” said Clara Pettis.

  “You’re taking a class?” said Genevieve, panic chased out of her mind by surprise. “Through the university?”

  “Irene is our teacher,” said Renee Martelli. “Every Monday we have a slideshow and lecture, then Wednesday mornings we go on a field trip.”

  Genevieve turned to Irene. “Really,” she said.

  “An introduction to Oriental art,” said Irene. She added, her eyes level on Genevieve’s, “I would have asked for your help, but you’ve been so busy this summer.”

  Genevieve saw then what should have been obvious: Irene had felt abandoned. It had been a lonely time, solo in the salon chair for a solid month, after so many cozy Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays. Genevieve hadn’t even made decent excuses—busy with the children the first few times, and then nothing at all.

  “Have you already been through, or did you just get here?” asked Julia Green. “We’re going on to Wat Pho.”

  “As a matter of fact, so are we,” said Genevieve, cutting off whatever Maxwell had been about to say. “We’ll join, if that’s all right.”

  She ignored the baleful look on his face as she fell in with the other women, strolling through the Chapel Royal and past the guardian monsters at the gate.

  * * *

  Max caught her elbow as they rounded the feet of the giant reclining Buddha at Wat Pho.

  “This is interminable,” he said.

  Genevieve said nothing, letting the Ladies move ahead. She gestured toward the incised designs on the soles of the statue’s feet, as if pointing out an interesting feature. “Irene knows,” she said when the Ladies were out of earshot. “She saw.”

  “Will that be a problem?” he said.

  “Of course it’s a problem,” she said through a clenched-teeth smile. The panic felt like a cold liquid washing around inside her. Irene wouldn’t tell Robert directly, of course, but she might tell her own husband. Would he then tell Robert? Genevieve had no idea how gossip spread among men. She darted a glance ahead; the group of Ladies had reached the doorway, stood waiting for them there. “Come on.” She walked briskly to catch up.

  “I’m all in,” said Clara when Genevieve and Max reached them. “We’re going back to the club.”

  “I’ll ride along with you, if that’s all right,” said Genevieve.

  “Five is too many for one tuk-tuk,” said Irene. She looked at Max. “We’ve barged into your tour for long enough. You two should carry on with your day.”

  The Ladies disappeared in a cloud of parting noises.

  “Finally,” said Max.

  Genevieve pushed his hand away from her arm. “What is wrong with you?” she said. “I told you, Irene knows. This could ruin my whole life.”

  “Change,” he said. “Not necessarily ruin.”

  “What?”

  “This doesn’t need to end,” he said. At first the words made no sense; it was as if he weren’t speaking English. “We could see each other every day—and night,” he said, while she stared at him. “We’ll travel. Go anywhere you want.” It was at once thrilling and horrifying, the thought of herself floating around the world like a loose balloon. “You could even have a job if you like.” He touched the Buddha nestled between her collarbones. “The man who sold this to me said it meant ‘overcoming fear.’ ”

  “I have children,” she said.

  “They’re not babies,” he said. Dismissive, casual.

  She remembered cooing over infant Beatrice, marveling at the miracle-tiny feet, pressing lips against one warm pink sole. They’re not babies. It was sickeningly true. They would not be babies again. How long had it been since she’d touched any of her children in that motherly, affectionate way? Her interaction with them had become a litany of don’ts, always chiding and correcting. She had a sudden quick pain under her ribs at the image that rose in her mind then, of Robert coming through the front door, that way he always did, with that light step, already half smiling, pleased to be home and to see her, to be mauled by the children’s welcome while Genevieve said Stop it now, stop jumping on him like animals.

  “Enough,” she said, although Max had stopped speaking. She put her hand out to hail a tuk-tuk, and when he tried to step in after her she said “No,” in a voice as cold as she could make it.

  * * *

  She got caught in a snarl of traffic, a vendor cart overturned ahead of them, a river of steaming coffee running along the side of the street, a lot of shouting. She fretted in the idling tuk-tuk: What if Irene had gone home, had already told her husband? When they finally reached the club, Genevieve walked through its doors with a sense of nostalgia. She’d spent so many afternoons here; after having their hair and nails done, she and Irene would lunch in the air-conditioned rooms decorated with hunting prints and oil portraits. Had the last time really been only a month ago?

  Irene was in one of the parlors with the other ladies; they were playing bridge.

  “One no trump,” said Clara.

  “That’s why I have no face cards,” said Renee. “Two hearts.”

  “Pass,” said Irene, before looking up and seeing Genevieve. At first her expression held only untainted pleasure and Genevieve had a brief hope: perhaps Irene had seen nothing after all. But then Irene’s smile scattered a little, reassembled itself.

  “Long time no see,” said Renee, looking up also.

  “Hello again,” said Genevieve, setting down her handbag and seating herself on an adjacent banquette, taking off her hat. “I have a few minutes before my driver comes.”

  “Pass,” said Julia.

  “Three hearts,” said Clara.

  “That’s impossible,” declared Renee. “You can’t go from one no trump to three hearts.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Clara. “I’m not sure I understand this part.”

  “This is the hardest part,” said Irene in a soothing voice. “Don’t worry, Clara, we’ll let you do it over. You probably want to go either two no trump, or pass.”

  “Two no trump,” said Clara, after a few seconds of studying her cards.

  “And I pass,” said Julia.

  “Pass,” said Irene.

  “Pass,” said Renee.

  “That makes me the dummy,” said Irene, laying out her cards: not nearly enough face cards to support the contract. They all watched Clara play and lose the first trick.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Genevieve suggested to Irene. “I need an iced tea.”

  “They’ll bring it,” said Clara, not looking up as she spoke, plucking at the cards in her hand, frowning at the ones on the table.

  “Let’s go to the outside bar,” said Irene, getting up.

  The heat bellied through the door as they opened it, like a rude guest not stepping aside to let them out. They walked slowly toward the outside bar at the other end of the swimming pool. There were a few shrieking children in the water, some ad
ults on the chaises under umbrellas.

  “At least now I know why,” Irene said. She was looking straight ahead. Tears trembled in her voice. Not angry, then; hurt. Bewildered by Genevieve’s sudden absence. “I thought I had done something wrong.”

  “I’m so sorry, Irene,” said Genevieve. Irene sniffed and nodded.

  They ordered iced teas at the outside bar, then didn’t turn back the way they’d come but kept walking, carrying the glasses with them, toward the deserted tennis courts, no one out playing in the strong sun.

  “Are you in love with him?” Irene asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Genevieve, and realized immediately that she ought to have said yes. Being in love might mean absolution to a romantic like Irene, who devoured cheap novels and cried in movies. “Maybe.”

  “I just don’t understand,” Irene said. “Robert’s so good-looking.” She lowered her voice. “Are you still—do you still—with Robert?”

  Genevieve recoiled slightly at the question. “It’s been thirteen years,” she said. “It’s not always—you know.”

  “I don’t think,” said Irene with a puzzled face, “that it was ever—you know—with Don.”

  The two women stopped walking, looked at each other, and simultaneously burst into laughter.

  Well, how about that, thought Genevieve as Irene, overcome, put a hand out to Genevieve’s forearm to steady herself. I might have told her everything all along. This woman to whom she had condescended as a follower might have been a real friend, a confidante. Genevieve had had bosom friends, in high school and during her two years at college; in due course they had fallen away. She hadn’t thought to mourn them, believing that the sacrifice of friends to the altar of marriage and family was part of growing up.