"I heard when I got in this afternoon. I don't know if he's here yet. Durbin broke her leg on a hiking trip--the secretary told me
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Durbin said she could actually hear the bone crack. Bad break, big surgery and everything, so the director called his buddy Robert Oliver. Can you believe that? I mean, lucky. Not for Durbin."
A sort of film reel went snapping and spinning around me -- Robert Oliver walking in the fields with us, pointing out angles of light and fixing the perspective on those low blue hills inland, the ones I'd driven past. Could we see them from the shore? I would have to say to him the first day, Oh, hello, I guess you don't remember me, but... And then I'd have to paint all week with him right there, walking around among our easels. I sighed aloud.
Frank was looking puzzled. "Don't you like his work? I mean, he's a traditionalist and everything, but, God, can he paint."
I was saved from this by the heavy clamor of a bell apparently rung outside to announce the meal, a sound I would hear twice a day for five days, a sound that still goes straight through my stomach when I think about it. Everyone began collecting around the tables. I hung back next to Frank until I saw that Robert had sat down at the table closest to his little group, as if to continue the conversation. Then I edged Frank into a seat as far away as possible from Robert and his illustrious colleagues. We sat together and critiqued the dinner, which was the very definition of wholesome, followed up by strawberry pie and cups of coffee. It was served by students Frank said were work-study artists who were in art school or college; there was no waiting in line, just these beautiful young people putting down our full plates in front of us. Someone even poured my water for me.
While we ate, Frank talked steadily about his classes, his student show, his talented friends who were scattering from Savannah to big cities all over the country. "Jason's going to Chicago--I might join him for a while next summer. Chicago's the next big place, that's pretty obvious." And so on. It was deadly, but it kept my confusion at bay, and by the time the strawberry pie came I felt safe for a whole night from being either recognized by or
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unrecognized by Robert Oliver. I could sense Frank's muscular shoulder next to mine, his mouth coming closer to my ear, his unspoken Maybe this is the beginning of something I My room is down at the far end of the men's dorm. During dessert the director of the program stood up behind a microphone at one end of the carriage house--he turned out to be the bullet-headed man with the thin gray hair--and told us how glad he was to have such a fine incoming group, how talented we were, how hard it had been to turn away all those other fine applications. ("And all those other workshop fees, too," Frank muttered to me.)
After the speech everybody got up and milled around for a few minutes while the work-study artists darted in to collect plates. A woman in a purple dress and huge earrings told Frank and me that there would be a bonfire behind the stables and we should come hang out there. "It's a tradition the first night," she explained, as if she'd been to these workshops many times. We walked out into the dark--I could smell ocean again, and the stars were showing overhead--and when we came around the edge of the buildings, there was a tremendous shower of sparks already raining upside down, toward the sky, and lighting up people's faces. I couldn't see beyond the trees at the edge of the yard, but I thought I could hear the pounding of waves. The application brochure had said the camp was a short stroll from the beach; tomorrow I would explore. There were a few paper lanterns hung in the trees, as if we'd come to attend a festival.
I felt an unexpected wave of hope--this would be magical, would erase the recent long tedium of my low-level teaching jobs, one at a city college and one at a community center, would close the gap between my work life and my secret life at home with my paintings and drawings, would end my hunger for the company of fellow artists, a longing that had grown unchecked since I'd finished my degree. Here, in just a few days, I would become a better painter than I'd ever dreamed I could be. Even Frank's cheerfully
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disdainful comments couldn't derail my sudden wild hope. "A mob scene," he said, and used that as an excuse to enclose my arm in confident fingers and steer us both away from the smoky side of the fire.
Robert Oliver stood among the older people--faculty, regulars (I recognized the woman in the purple dress)--also out of range of the smoke, a bottle of beer in his hand. The bottle had picked up the light of the fire, which made it glow from the inside, like a topaz. He was listening now to the director. I remembered that trick he had, which possibly wasn't a trick, of listening more than he talked. He had to bend his head a little to listen to almost anyone, and that gave him an intent, attentive appearance, and then he looked up or away with just his eyes as he listened, as if what the speaker was saying was printed on the sky. He had put on a sweater with part of the neck frayed away; it occurred to me that we shared an affinity for old clothes.
I considered stepping closer to the fire, out in its light, and trying to catch Robert's eye, and then dismissed the thought. Tomorrow's embarrassment would come soon enough. Oh yes, I (don't) remember you. The interesting thing would be seeing whether he lied about it. Frank was handing me a beer--"Unless you want something stronger." I didn't. He was pressing up against my shoulder now, my old sweatshirt, and after I'd had a little of the beer that sensation of his hard arm against mine was not unpleasant. I could see Robert Oliver's head in the starlight, his bright eyes fixed for a moment on the flames before us, his rough hair devilishly upright, his face gentle and composed. It was a more deeply lined face than I remembered, but he must have been at least forty by now; there were heavy grooves at the corners of his mouth, which vanished when he smiled.
I turned to Frank, who was pressing more distinctly against my sweatshirt. "I think I'll head to bed," I said with what I hoped was insouciant uncaring. "Have a good night. Big day tomorrow." I regretted the last statement; it wouldn't be as big a day for Frank
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the Great Artist as it would be for me, the talented nobody, but he didn't need to know that.
Frank gazed at me over his beer, regretful and too young to hide it. "Hey, yeah. Sleep well, okay?"
No one was in bed yet in the long dormitory, another converted barn, which held the women students in its little closed-in stalls. No privacy here, certainly, in spite of the attempt to put solid walls among the guests. It still had a faintly horsey smell, which I remembered, with a stab of nostalgia, from Muzzy's three years of enforced riding lessons for me and Martha. "You sit so well on a horse," she would tell me approvingly after every session, as if that were justification enough for all the time and expense. I used the cold-seated toilet down the hall--down the aisle, rather-- and then shut myself into my cubicle to unpack. There was a desk big enough to draw on, a hard chair, a tiny bureau with a framed mirror above it, a narrow bed made up with narrow white sheets, a bulletin board with nothing on it but thumbtack holes, and a window with brown curtains.
After standing there disoriented for a moment or two, I pulled the curtains shut and unzipped my sleeping bag to spread on the bed for extra warmth. I put my ratty clothes in the drawers and my sketch pads and journal on top of the desk. I hung my sweatshirt up on the back of the door. I laid out my pajamas and my book. Through the closed window I could hear the sounds of merriment, voices, distant laughter. Why am I excluding myself from all that? I wondered, but with as much pleasure as melancholy. My truck was parked in the lot near the camp and I was bone-weary from my long drive, ready for bed, or nearly. Standing in front of the mirror, I performed my nightly undressing ritual, pulling my T-shirt off over my head. Underneath was my delicate, expensive bra. I stood very straight, looking at myself. Self-portrait, night after night. Then I took off the bra and set it aside and stood
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looking again: myself, and all for me. Self-portrait, nude. When I had finished that long gaze, I put on my graying pajamas and dove into the bed; the sheets were cold, my boo
k one I thought I should be reading, a biography of Isaac Newton. My hand found the light switch, and my head found the pillow.
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1879
My darling friend,
Your letter touched me greatly and filled me with the pain of having caused you pain, which I see when I read between your brave and selfless lines. Since I sent my letter to you, I have regretted it every moment, fearing that it would not only put hideous images in your head--the ones I must live with myself--but also appear a pitiable bid for sympathy. I am human, and I love you, but I swear neither of these has been my intention. This shame makes me glad that you told me your nightmare, my dear, despite your reservations about doing so; this way I can suffer with you in turn, sorry as I am to have caused your sleepless night.
wife had indeed died in such loving arms as yours, she would have felt herself in the embrace of an angel, or of the daughter she never had. Your letter has already brought a strange alteration in my thoughts about that day, which occupy and torment me frequently--until this morning my keenest wish was always that she might have died in my arms, if she had to die. And now I think that if she could have died in the gentle embrace of a daughter, of a person with your instinctive tenderness and courage, that might have been more comforting still, both to her and to me. Thank you, my angel, for lifting some of this weight and for making me feel the generosity that is your nature. I have destroyed your letter, although reluctantly, so that you can never be implicated in any knowledge of a dangerous past. I hope you will destroy mine as well, both this one and the last.
I must go out for a while; I cannot collect or calm myself indoors this morning. I will walk a little and will make certain this is delivered in perfect safety to you, wrapped in the grateful heart of your
O.V.
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CHAPTER 59 Mary
The next morning I woke early, as if someone had whispered to me--fully awake, knowing exactly where I was--and my first thought was of the ocean. It took me only a few minutes to put on clean khakis and a sweatshirt and to brush my hair and teeth in the chilly dorm bathroom with spiders on the ceiling. Then I crept out of the barn, wetting my tennis shoes in the dew; I would regret that later, I knew, since I didn't have another pair with me. The morning was gray with mist, clearing in uneven patches overhead to show pellucid sky, the evergreens full of crows and cobwebs, the birches already turning over a few yellow leaves.
A track led out of the camp just beyond the ash-heaped fire ring, as I'd hoped. I was going in the right direction, toward the ocean, and after a few minutes of listening to my shoes tap the path and to the sounds of the woods, I came out onto a stony beach, the slop of water and sea wrack, the bubbling tide among gray fingers of land. Fog hung right over the water, struggling to clear, so that I got glimpses of pale sky above but could see just a yard or two of waves. There was no view out to sea, only that fog and the edges of the continent lined with dark upright firs, a few cottages breaking their ranks. I took off my shoes and rolled my khakis to the knee. The water was cool, then cold, then very cold, penetrating the bones of my feet and making my calves pimple with chill. The seaweed reached over my ankles.
I felt suddenly afraid, alone with the woods, the smell of pine, the invisible Atlantic. Everything was still, apart from the surge of water. I couldn't bring myself to wade in deeper than my ankles--I
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had that sudden childhood fear of sharks and entangling weeds, the sense I might be pulled under and lost at sea. There was nothing to gaze out at; the fog returned my stare like a kind of blindness. I wondered about how to paint fog and tried to remember if I'd ever seen a painting that was mostly fog. Maybe something by Turner, or a Japanese print. Snow, yes, and rain, and clouds hovering on mountains, but I couldn't think of any paintings of this kind of fog. At last I backed out of the tide and found a rock to sit on, a high enough, dry enough, smooth enough rock to save the backside of my khakis, with a higher rock to lean against. There was an equally childish pleasure in that, finding one's own throne, and I fell into a dream. I was still sitting there when Robert Oliver came out of the woods.
He was alone and he seemed lost in thought, as I'd just been; he walked slowly, gazing down at his feet on the path and occasionally around him at the trees or out to the foggy water. He was barefoot, in old corduroy pants, and he wore a crumpled yellow cotton shirt hanging open over a T-shirt with some letters on it that didn't quite form words, from where I sat. Now I would have to introduce myself whether I wanted to or not. I thought of standing up and greeting him and immediately missed the moment--I started to get up and then realized I was still out of his line of vision. I sat down again behind my boulders in an agony of embarrassment. If things went well, he would put his feet in the ocean for a moment, check the temperature, and turn around to go back to the camp; I would wait twenty minutes, let my face cool off, and sneak back alone. I huddled against the cold rock. I couldn't take my eyes off him; for one thing, if he saw me, I wanted to see him recognize me. Which he probably wouldn't.
Then he did what I'd most feared and longed for, without knowing it: he took off his clothes. He didn't turn away toward the ocean or hide in the edge of the forest; he simply reached down and unbuttoned his trousers, pulled them off--he wasn't wearing underwear--and then pulled off his shirts, dropping everything
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in a pile above the tide line and walking toward the water. I was paralyzed. He stood only a few yards away from me, his long, muscled back and legs bare, rubbing his head as if to subdue his hair or rouse his mind from sleep, then rested his hands loosely on his hips. He could have been a studio model, stretching stiff limbs while the class took a break. He stood looking out to sea, relaxed, completely alone (as far as he knew). He turned his head a little, away from where I sat. He twisted his body, gently, warming up, so that in spite of myself I got a glimpse of wiry dark hair, of dangling cock. Then he waded swiftly out into the water and--while I sat shivering, watching, wondering what to do--dove in, a long, shallow dive away from the last rocks, and swam a few strokes. I knew already how cold the water covering him must be, but he didn't turn back until he'd swum out twenty yards.
Finally he wheeled around in the water, came back more swiftly, and found his feet, stumbling a little, wading in. He dripped and gasped; he wiped his face. Drops glittered from the hair on his body and the heavy wet curls on his head. At the shore he finally saw me. You can't look away at such a moment, even if you want to, and pretense is impossible: how could you miss Poseidon stalking out of the ocean; how could you pretend to be checking your nails or scraping snails from the rock? I just sat there, mute, miserable but also transfixed. I even thought at that moment that I wished I could paint the scene--a cliché kind of thought, something I rarely consider in the midst of experience. He stopped and studied me for a moment, a little startled, but didn't make any move to cover himself. "Hello," he said, attentive, wary, possibly amused.
"Hello," I answered as firmly as I could. "I'm sorry."
"Oh, no--no worries." He reached for his clothes on the pebbly beach and, using the T-shirt, dried himself modestly but without hurry, then dressed himself in his pants and yellow oxford. He came a little closer. "Sorry if I was the one who startled you," he said. He stood there studying me, and I saw the dreaded
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expression of half recognition come into his eyes; saw, miserably, that he couldn't quite place me.
"To make it worse, we used to know each other." It came out sounding flatter, harsher, than I'd intended.
He put his head to one side, as if the ground could tell him my name and what he should remember about me. "I'm sorry," he said at last. "I'm terrible about this, but remind me."
"Oh, it's no big deal." I punished him by staring him down anyway. "I'm sure you teach a million students. I was in one of your classes at Barnett a long time ago, just for a term. Visual Understanding. But you really started me toward art, so I've always wanted to thank you fo
r that."
He was looking hard at me now, not bothering to hide his search for my younger presence, as a more polite person might have done. "Wait." I waited. "We had lunch one time, didn't we? I remember something about that. But your hair--"
"Fair enough. It was a different color, blond. I dyed it because I was tired of having people see only that."
"Yes, I'm sorry. I do remember now. Your name--"
"Mary Bertison," I said, and now that he was dressed I put out my hand.
"Good to see you again. Robert Oliver."
I was no longer his student, or wouldn't be again until ten o'clock this morning. "I know you're Robert Oliver," I said as sardonically as I could.
He laughed. "What are you doing here?"
"Taking your landscape class," I said, "except that I didn't know it was going to be you."
"Yes, it was an emergency." He was rubbing his hair now with both hands, as if he wished he had a towel. "But what a nice coincidence. Now I can see how you're coming along."
"Except that you won't remember what I was doing before," I pointed out, and he laughed again, that lovely release of all
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troubles, with nothing wry or knowing in it--Robert laughed like a child. I remembered now those gestures of hand and arm, and the curling edges of his mouth, the oddly sculpted face, the charm that was charming because there was no awareness behind it, as if he were simply renting his body and it had turned out to be a good one, although he treated it with a renter's lack of caring. We walked slowly back together, and where the path allowed only single file, he went ahead, not a gentleman, and I was relieved because I didn't have to feel his eyes on my back and wonder what their expression might be. When we reached the edge of the lawns, with the mansion in full view and dew glittering across the grass, I could see people hurrying in to breakfast and realized that we had to join them. "I don't know anyone here except you," I confessed on impulse, and we both paused at the edge of the woods.