Anything but Still Lives: The Worlds of Edward Hopper

Papa’s proverb and plopping it straight back where it belonged, in her heart. What you had inside was what was real.

  She sat in Mama’s rocker. Papa’s side table held the flowers. Jake came over to her, smelling of Sunlight soap and hope. Their own apple tree would fruit, she knew, hugging her belly tight. The singing bird would come. One day.

  Perfectly Fine

  (inspired by Hopper’s Compartment C, Car 293, 1938, in a private collection)

  I can honestly say that I don’t think I had ever seen anyone, anything so perfect, everything in place as it ought to be. The way she walked – my, it was as if she glided on water, like a swan, where any hint of movement is sunk beneath a becalmed sea. A swan, which seemingly arrives at here – from there – without any effort, without any conscious intervention.

  That is how she entered my life. As a perfectly presented floating swan. And the truth be known, that’s how she stayed. Everything in place, no disorder or awkwardness. Ever. I wasn’t even curious or intrigued to know if she picked her nose or flossed her teeth like the rest of the population. Disbelief suspended as surely as her wings arched, feather by curled feather, over her beautiful back. Her neck, long, slender and unblemished, sculpted by the hand of God himself, turned and nodded in my direction. Here was perfection’s countenance, right in front of me. Lucia, my new secretary.

  When she started in the firm, others called her the ice queen. Impenetrable, they claimed. Too cold to touch, fingers needing to be ripped raw from that frigid surface, they joked. There could be no expectation of her eventual melting, or even a remote chance of softening, they insisted. She would never open up like the other girls who came and went through the brokerage – mostly on their knees, in front of open trousers.

  But that’s what held her apart, above, on high. This self-elevation, this ‘I’m complete’ aura which cloaked her form. All white light. White light and perfection – that was the aura, those were the words it spoke. I made no attempt to crack it, break through as others did, content simply to bask in the radiance of this light, and observe. Probe with my mind, penetrate, peel softly away each layer of a perfect whole to reveal its inner essence.

  Her husky’s eyes, for example, a clear intelligent arctic blue that said she could see straight through you and back out the other side. Her smooth curled locks of hair, the colour of ripened wheat; her elegant hand, swiftly, seamlessly, taking dictation; her skirt perfectly exposing the curve of her hips without being provocative. Her legs – I imagined they would be soft, cool to touch at first, but gradually warming the closer I came to the source. Her source. Of life. Energy. Power.

  I would need to shift in my seat after thoughts such as those, clear my throat of its lump of desire, while she watched me with those eyes, pen poised for the next notation.

  It was after we’d worked late one evening, tidying up a very important deal, that I offered to walk her to the subway, to be sure she arrived home safely. She seemed genuinely appreciative of my concern. And so it began, our companionship. Slowly. Smoothly. Gliding across water, unruffled perfection.

  The other men made lewd suggestions of a tiger lurking under her cool veneer. How she’d be in bed with smudged lipstick, hair askew, passionate eyes, a wild cat scratching, clawing. I’d carry her mark the rest of my days, they said. But I stopped my ears to such talk. She was my angel. Perfect inside, perfect out. She settled me, calmed me, was protective of me. Compassionate, even, to my way of being.

  We married in a small registry office ceremony. She required none of the usual trappings. Just us, witnesses, and celebrant. So beautiful, so pure in ivory silk, she was. Perfection suited her so well.

  I tried. I tried hard. But how could I be a god to her goddess? What passed in a dreamscape didn’t replicate in reality, a lump of desire which stayed forever in my throat. She stroked my head, said it was OK. Some things needed time.

  Soon after, though, she took to wearing black. Her light was going out, and all because of me. She was in mourning, and so started to read. Read, read, read. The world sighed and shook its head. Meanwhile, my parents awaited an audience. We would go to Chicago for Thanksgiving.

  The 20th Century Limited stood at Grand Central Terminal. In 16 hours we would be pulling in to La Salle Street Station. The train looked superb, all those gleaming new Pullmans. The maiden run had been in June, cutting four precious hours from the journeys of my youth.

  ‘I understand Henry Dreyfuss was the designer,’ she remarked as we walked the length of plush crimson carpet leading to the door of the car. The porter, George, introduced himself by way of buttoning a carnation to my lapel and handing Lucia a small bouquet and cello-wrapped basket of perfume.

  ‘It’s a wonderful example of art deco industrial design,’ she commented as he led us to the compartment, pointing out the dining and lounge areas on the way. For my shave next morning, I would visit the barber in the club car. I needed to look my best for our arrival.

  ‘They look so divine in their uniforms. Ebony skin encased in red, white and gold – such a perfect combination,’ she said when we were alone. ‘But is it true they are all called George?’ and giggled at her self-made joke before settling into her seat with the current edition of the New Yorker and a Reader’s Digest.

  Ah, now she would close down. Shut down on me as surely as a shutter is pulled to at day’s end. To darken the world, a world where was no room for me. A world of words and scenes and lives she never shared. Except to tell she wanted to begin herself – to write. And to present said stories to the New Yorker or Harper’s or Scribner’s, even the Atlantic Review.

  Much as I loved her, much as I was smitten by her perfection, I knew this to be a silly girlish dream. How could her correctly proportioned life possibly extend to literary ability?

  Oh, how she had laughed.

  ‘How can you say that? You have no idea of what I write or how I compose. What things I have in my head, inside here (at which point she would press an open hand to a beautifully rounded breast – deflating it, deflating me), things that are just waiting, wanting to be written.’

  ‘Then show me!’ I’d implore.

  ‘No.’ The answer would be sudden, immediate, her features growing dark. Dark and closed as her high-buttoned mourning dress. ‘You’ll read it when it’s published. You are my husband, not my critic.’

  Lightening, just as suddenly, coquettishly even, she would show me a passage from one Erskine Caldwell (it was too much really – to think she read his works! He who writes of sex and violence and poverty, ignorance and racism! But nevertheless this is what this particular mentor of hers advises doubtful husbands such as myself): ‘When a woman gets a notion in her head, no matter how silly a man thinks it is, give in to her. Let her go ahead every time and do what she wants to. That’s the finest, and cheapest, insurance in the world to keep peace under the roof, and peace is what a man wants around the clock when he’s married.’ At which she’d kiss me full on the mouth. To seal the pact.

  So, yes. Today as any other. When the magazines came out, she went in, and I left on the other side of a high and dry stone wall of words.

  We pulled out with a whistle and wheeze of brakes, off through the suburbs. I brought some papers from my satchel, accounts to correct, revise, but couldn’t concentrate. The rocking and rolling of the train induced a kind of reverie, I suppose, only satisfied by giving in to it and staring out a window at passing scenery.

  Occasionally I’d try to re-engage her in this life on earth, describe to her the route I knew so well. Following the Hudson north before heading out to Buffalo, then cutting south-west to meet Lake Michigan before coming along the south shore of Erie, up into Chicago and home. Yes, I knew the route well. Hence and forth all those years whilst at Columbia. Still knowing what I’d see and when, which stations awaited us, which fell behind. Remembering with joy the patterns of the landscape as they shifted with the compass needle as much as the seasons.

  I heard George whistli
ng from further up the corridor long before he appeared at the compartment door to turn down the beds before dinner.

  ‘Blue Skies,’ she said. ‘Lovely.’

  Of course, once that damned tune was in my head, there was no way of shunting it out. It backboned my reverie. As the cars rocked and rolled over those steel railroad tracks, I sifted and sorted through the lyrics time and again. Could I remember them all? And correctly sequenced? George whistled on, the train wound through the valley, colours melded to a late-afternoon mush, and my brain kneaded itself in concentration. Like leavened bread pulled and pounded, stretched beyond yielding. How did it go again?

  I was blue, jut as blue as I could be

  Ev’ry day was a cloudy day for me

  Then good luck came a-knocking at my door

  Skies were grey but they’re not grey anymore

  Blue skies smiling at me

  Nothing but blue skies do I see

  Bluebirds singing a song

  Nothing but bluebirds all day long

  Never saw the sun shining so bright

  Never saw things going so right

  Noticing the days hurrying by

  When you’re in love, my how they fly

  Blue days all of them gone

  Nothing but blue skies from now on

  I should care if the wind blows east or west

  I should fret if the worst looks like the best

  I should mind if they say if can’t be true

  I should smile, that’s exactly what I do.

  Ridiculous. After each verse I was turning the words upside down and inside out, looking for meaning in a meaningless dirge. I should mind, indeed! Blue, blue, blue, I repeated: the blue of the sky, the blue of her eyes, the black of her dress, the black of her hat, the green of the walls, the white of the lamp, the book in her lap, I feel like a nap! Nothing escaped my caustic humour. On and on we rolled toward the gathering dusk. On and on she sat self-absorbed and oblivious to my emasculated presence. Couldn’t he stop that infernal whistling?

  ‘I’m off for a short stroll,’ I told her. ‘Might have a cigarette.’ Would she deign to look up, acknowledge the statement? I decided to rephrase it as a question – better to encourage a response. ‘Do you want to stretch your legs?’

  She lifted her eyes to my face. Her lips perfectly flush. With desire. For something written on a page no doubt. Oh, the anger of impotence. Not a pretty grimace. I needed that cigarette. A stretching and limbering of sad obsessions.

  ‘No. I’m perfectly fine,’ was her predictable response, and resumed her reading before the last word had even left her lips.

  Always I watched her. But why was she never interested in looking at me? Constantly absorbed in those damned stories, stories she thought she could write herself. Ridiculous, preposterous! Couldn’t she just be satisfied with this life? Watching from the compartment door – couldn’t she feel my eyes on her? Still she never looked up. Embedded in her reading, stock-still she sat. Legs smooth and beautiful, dress sleek and demure, hair just so, only a wisp or two of yellow straw visible from beneath an identical just-so hat. All in black, all in mourning.

  Feeding my anger, all her black, all her perfection, all her beauty. I wanted to hate her, but only succeeded in hating myself more. for my commensurate imperfection. My fists clenched, my breath quickened, my stomach gurgled, my bowels shifted. It was Thanksgiving – for what, for whom? For something lost? But you can only lose something once had. What had she had? Only a cock you could squish like Jello. Only balls that were made of sponge.

  Ah, but she had this dream, this idea to write. Caldwell’s quote, Sally Benson’s experience: ‘She used to be a bank teller and now she’s a finalist in the O’Henry! It is possible, it is!’ She would become animated, alive, her white light back and bright, there in bed as she talked of her dream.

  But no wild cat scratches. No, none ever sustained by this flaccid flesh. Our pillow talk only about her dream when there was nothing else to discuss. Neither of us wanting to touch (literally? figuratively? Oh, my wit could be sabre-cruel to my member’s lack of functionality!) the most obvious topic. I stood and watched her from the compartment door. Perfectly encapsulated, no holes to plug, no putty-filler required, everything correct and in its place. Why should I ever have expected her perfection to have any room for me?

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to stretch your legs before dinner?’ I repeated.

  ‘No thank you,’ my Lucia responded. No – her Lucia. Lucia. Only Lucia.

  I took my leave as the sun sank low, as we crossed yet another river. Soon the lamps would be lit. Soon dinner would be announced. George. George would come and tell her. And maybe then she’d notice I would no longer bear witness to her perfection anymore. I walked through to the end of the car, lit another cigarette. Stood there, at the end of the galley, stared out at the landscape images of my youth. I had failed her – the penny dropped in my holey bucket as surely as if Atlas had flung a boulder from his mountaintop therein.

  Me, the idea of me must have held some promise, some tiny measure of hope, but soon gone, folded like flour into a pancake batter, drowned by the weight of milk and eggs and sugar, the fabric of one or the other melting away, fusing and congealing with all those daily life concerns and spoils of battle. Ideas hopes dreams desires reduced to a lifetime of lurking as despondent bottom dwellers, sneaking their suck at joy via nausea-inducing algae alone. I had failed her, and would only fail further, the further we journeyed together. Oh, how it felt! To look that last time in at the door of the compartment. At her and her New Yorker, hope shredded in a tidy lap, the pages cradled, nursed, lovingly handled, like the tiny infant she could never hope to bear.

  I looked, watched, wanted one last time her gaze to feel upon my skin, like the sun’s warmth, or a fresh summer breeze or even the sting of rain that smacks you fair in the face with disinterest. Anything. Any reaction, I silently begged. Turn your eyes and emotions, whatever they be, on me one last time. Please.

  But no. She stayed true to her reading, and I to my conviction, leaving the train at Boulder and crossing to the other side of the platform. It must have been an express freight to all intents and purposes, its whistle sounding long and clear, its Blue Skies reprise a single note to clear the path ahead. I wouldn’t fail much longer. This time I’d taste success. And it would be blood red.

  You know, she really was quite perfect.

  Season’s Shift

  (inspired by Hopper’s Cape Cod Evening, 1939, in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC)

  It wasn’t often she came onto the Cape these days. But she’d been to see that movie, and it had got her thinking. Thinking about way back when, way back when hopes and dreams were somehow more real. Now. Now? Now all were just memories, just baggage. Stuck in a trunk out back.

  But it had got her thinking. As movies do. They’re good at that – staying on in your head where they make you can think-think-think. Just one film-maker’s take on a subject, perhaps, but seen, remembered, experienced differently, singularly, across a full spectrum of colours, a whole rainbow of possibilities, by each person in each darkened theatre. Those damned movies. They don’t leave be. They go on staying in your head, unblinkered, unfettered by all the baggage brought into the cinema by an unsuspecting ticket-holder. Baggage that’s already loaded up in an over-loaded head.

  So you can watch sweet romancing in Bringing Up Baby, and wish Cary Grant was your honey. Or feel the sting of a slap long after Spencer Tracy’s face has faded into the credits of Boy’s Town. Or wonder why Charlie Chaplin was ever considered a comic when he made such insightful statements about the perils of modern life.

  That’s how it happened for Jennifer. Jennifer and her memories, Jennifer and her baggage. One day in late summer when she had been to see The Wizard of Oz. When they were talking war in Europe.

  She’d asked Harvey to come along.

  ‘Fancy-schmanzy,’ he’d scoff
ed. ‘Schmaltz-waltz – what would I want to do that for?’ Nope. Not interested. ‘I’ll go play cards with the boys instead.’

  So she’d gone with Betty from across the street. Two older women identifying more with a youthful Dorothy than their Aunt Em contemporary.

  That song. Lord have mercy. How that song had just hung in the air. How Judy’s strong clear voice had just held it up there. High, higher still, till off it had floated. Off and over that rainbow. A final puff of breath and away it had gone. And with it, Jennifer’s tears. Jennifer’s tears about all that damned baggage.

  Baggage neatly bundled and dragged through her life, from one experience to the next, from one movie to the next. Repacked, rebundled at times, but never left behind, never shrugged off. The weight of it getting ever-heavier, the size of it getting ever-bigger. It slowed her down, the more it contained, the more that prayers went unanswered, words unsaid, dreams unrealised. Till it had slowed her to the point of stopping altogether. Just plain stopped.

  The frustration. Oh, the frustration! There were no obstacles in front to mar her passage, all clear white light and a rainbow way off in the distance up ahead. Yet no way of going on, going further, toward it with such a load to carry.

  ‘He ain’t heavy, Father, he’s m’ brother,’’ Mickey Rourke had told Spencer. Oh, but he was a child, with a child’s innocence and a child’s eyes. Jennifer thought different, Jennifer knew different. Jennifer knew how heavy everything was. She watched Judy’s innocence float up and off and over that rainbow. Light as a feather, soft as a wisp of wool, the only thing going with it Jennifer’s tears in a darkened cinema.

  Damn that baggage. She shook her head, smoothed her lap, had a last dab at her eyes while the credits rolled. Silly thoughts. Nonsense noises. She and Betty went for a coffee and discussed the movie – how realistic the sets, how wonderful the technicolour. Wasn’t Margaret Hamilton excellent as the Wicked Witch? And to think she’d come back after that fire on the set!

  Neither mentioned the damp hankies in their clutch purses.

  She couldn’t seem to get the song out of her head. Flanked, as it was, by the poignant, wistful face of Dorothy – a daily visitation it became. Now she stood with hands drowned in dishwashing water, staring out the kitchen window. A robin on the feeder, not a blue bird. That was a start, away from the symbols and reference points. But still it crept in. Words. Melody. The dream of unchained baggage ...

  Some day I’ll wish upon a star

  And wake up where the clouds are far behind me

  Where troubles melt like lemon drops

  Away above the chimney pots

  That’s where you’ll find me

  Somewhere over the rainbow blue birds