After the Fire

  Bitter, shamed, and furious with Will, even though it was she who had pressed for an opinion, she could not help thinking of Arnie and what he had so generously paid her for some pictures to match his upholstery. He, at least, had a heart….

  Will really needn't have rubbed it in like this, as if he actually enjoyed being harsh. Yes, she was furious.

  When he moved to touch her arm, she drew away. And then it was he who drew away, walked to the end of the room and back, threw up his arms, and lamented.

  “I should be taken out and shot. Look what I've done to you! That's what comes of speaking your mind or spilling everything out without taking thought of results. When am I ever going to learn? I'll say it again, I meant well. You know I did, Hyacinth. In your heart you must know. Why would I want to make you as miserable as you are now? Why? Listen to me. If you want a career, and I don't even know whether you will want to after the divorce, you've got one at your fingertips, literally at your fingertips. Look how they've gone crazy over that dress! You need to go—”

  “That was a copy, too,” she said scornfully.

  “With clothing it doesn't matter. They're all copies. Copies of copies. Saris, or lace fichus from the eighteenth century,” Will answered with equal scorn. “What you need is design school. Learn how to cut and fit. The color sense you've got, that's plain.”

  “Easy as that? Maybe I should take up ballet dancing instead.”

  Will gave her a rueful smile. “Okay. You're entitled to some sarcasm. But when you take time to think it over, I hope you'll forgive my rough tongue.”

  She said suddenly, “It's all very well to talk about design school. Even if I wanted to do it, and I don't, it's too late.”

  “Of course it isn't. If you were sixty years old, it wouldn't be too late. Nothing's ever too late.”

  “Let's go down,” Hyacinth said, moving toward the stairs.

  From behind her came Will's question as he followed: “Who taught you to sew?”

  “My grandmother.”

  “She taught you well. Sally Dodd says you have golden hands.”

  “Funny. My grandmother said that, too.”

  “Well, they're both right.”

  In the downstairs hall, Will hesitated as though he were waiting to be asked into the living room.

  People do not usually have lunch at somebody's house and depart fifteen minutes after they have eaten. Hyacinth knew very well what he expected. But he was not going to get it.

  “Very nice having you,” she said correctly, and turned toward the front door.

  “Hyacinth, I know you're furious. I understand it. But listen to me once more. I want to see you doing something with your life. Learn fashion design. Do it now.”

  “No, you listen to me. The dress was a freak success. It means nothing. It's worthless. I have no ideas.”

  “You'll have ideas, just as you did with art. You already know how to sketch. Put into cloth what you did on canvas, and I predict you'll make a new life.”

  “A new life,” she repeated, not caring to hide her bitterness.

  “Yes. You haven't said much about your troubles, but it's plain that something has hurt you very deeply.” Will looked about. “This house—to be in it alone must be like inhabiting a tomb. You need to leave it behind and make a new start.”

  She was unable to answer him. He had taken her only support away, had robbed her of purpose and confidence, of the very little she had left of either.

  “Are you so angry with me that you won't shake hands?”

  Offering her hand, she said only, “I'm going to forget everything you said, and I'm going to go right on with my work.”

  Apparently Will chose to ignore this little speech, as he replied, “Thank you for lunch. You make a wicked apple tart. I'm taking a fairly long business trip to Europe, but I'll call you when I get back.”

  “Have a good trip,” she said, and closed the door.

  She did not watch him go down the walk as she had done once before. If he really thought he would see her again, he was very, very much mistaken. There was a beating, a pounding in her ears. When that happens, she had once learned, you are hearing your own heartbeat. It was no wonder.

  She ran upstairs to look again at the work that had been so thoroughly condemned. All the hours, the pleasure, the hopes that had gone to make these lovely things! How could he, a passing stranger in her life, come in here and wipe away all of that! Wherever she had lived, she had been the “artist,” known and respected for her talent. Why, Gerald—even he—had recognized her for that much at least: Hyacinth, the artist.

  It was too much to bear. It was being hit, hit hard, when you are already down. And Will Miller had known she was down. Hadn't he said that it was plain to see?

  The beating persisted in her ears. If I should become ill here alone in this house, if I should die here—and it's possible, because even healthy young people can drop if the strain is too great—I shall never see my children.

  And from her throat there tore a terrible sound, like the wail of women outraged by a conquering army. There was no reason in her and nothing to restrain her as she ran to the telephone and called Gerald's number.

  “You!” she cried when she heard his voice. “You! What do you think you're doing to me? I've had enough. I want my children. I'm the one who gave them birth. They are far more mine than they can ever be yours. You're evil. You're a monster without heart. Cold. Cold. Have you any idea how I despise you? I loathe you. I would just as soon hold a poisonous snake as put a finger on you. How can you see yourself in a mirror without feeling disgust? What have you got to say about what you've done?”

  “What I have to say is that you're out of control again, that's all.”

  Calm, that's what he was. Another subject for a top-market advertisement. Furnishings, this time? The desk would be mahogany, a well-waxed antique, with every article on its surface in proper order.

  She dropped her voice. “I'm not out of control. I'm only asking you why you are doing this to me. What have I done to you that you should take my children away from me?”

  “You know quite well that you may see them, Hyacinth. You will have that in writing before this month is out. All you have to do is give proper notice to me, and—”

  “And you will take them away, trick me as you did last Thanksgiving.”

  “Nonsense. That was a misunderstanding.”

  “A deliberate one.”

  “If it makes you happy to think so, go ahead.” As clearly as if he had been sitting in front of her, she saw his casual shrug. “You really have no complaints, Hyacinth. You must have read about couples in separate countries who can't even get permission to have their children visit them at all.”

  “They're not mine anymore,” she said. “They're yours. You make the decisions as to when I shall see them, you choose where they'll go to school, what they'll eat and wear, you watch them grow from day to day, while I—” Her voice collapsed into a sob. “I'm sometimes a visitor and sometimes a hostess who has gifts for them. I, their mother! Their mother!”

  “It's a sad situation,” he said quietly. “It's very sad. But I am not the one who brought it about. You should look yourself straight in the eye.”

  “I am looking at myself straight in the eye. And I know it was an accident, my cigarettes and my carelessness. But it was nothing more. And you know it was not.”

  “I don't know anything of the sort. Was it by accident that you trashed two desks? I'm not the only person who saw the mess, the computers lying on the floor, the telephones—no, and I'm not the only one who knows about Sandy. You told me yourself, if you care to remember all this, Hyacinth, that my so-called love affair was a lively topic for the local gossips. Right here in the next town, a man was picked up when some evidence was found after five or six years, and he was then identified. Oh, he got a little time off for good behavior. And”—with this emphasis, Hyacinth could see Gerald's eyes widen as his brows rose—“and there were
no injuries or deaths in the case, either. So don't complain. You're well off. And you'd be better off still if you deposited my checks and went about your business.”

  “Don't waste the stamps, Gerald. I shall never use ten cents' worth of your checks. With so many good people dying all over this earth, I wonder why you should still be among the living.”

  “Thanks. Is that all? Because I'm busy. I don't know about you, but I have things to do.”

  When he hung up, Hyacinth remained with the instrument in her hand. Things to do. The words repeated themselves, making an idiotic refrain in her head. I have nothing. I walk into my studio, pick up the brush, and wait for an idea, but none comes. What is to become of me? I shall become a shell, with nothing inside.

  On one of the first fine warm days of early spring, Granny had a stroke. Without warning and without pain, she closed her eyes. She would have been the first to say that her death did not bring with it the intense grief that Jim's death had brought. And during the lengthy prayers at the funeral services, Hyacinth's mind wandered, making loose contact between Granny's life and her own.

  One after the other came before the congregation to say a few words about Granny. There was a very old man who had been an usher at her wedding; there were two distant cousins from Ohio; there was a younger woman who had been her next-door neighbor. Each of them spoke well. They were sincerely moved, and as she heard them, Hyacinth felt an overwhelming return of memory, the sights and sounds and fragrances of Granny and her house: the knitting needles in the basket, apples baking on the stove, Granny's lily-of-the-valley perfume, and Granny complaining to the humane society about a dog left outdoors in the cold.

  The old, old man remembered things that Hyacinth had never known.

  “She took in boarders during the Depression. She made their meals, washed their clothes, and scrubbed their floors; she had never done such things or needed to do them, but she taught herself and did them.

  “When the war came and the Depression ended, she helped her husband rebuild his business. When he died of cancer, she took over the business and saved a nest egg for old age. She lost two sons, one in war, another war, and one not long ago, your father, Hyacinth, your husband, Francine. And through it all, she held up her head. She never forgot how to laugh. She kept her zest for life. She lived it bravely.”

  When the service was over, Hyacinth did not linger to exchange sympathy and reminiscences with the large crowd that had gathered. Heavy with her thoughts, she went straight home instead and lay awake half the night with those thoughts.

  A few days later, she left a message on Francine's answering machine. “Gone to New York on business. I need time to think. Don't worry. I'm fine. I'll be back soon.”

  Then she closed the front door and departed for the train.

  In her room at the hotel in New York, she made a list of art galleries, twenty in all, where she would study every picture, no matter how long it might take. It would be a dizzying journey from the Italian Renaissance to the nineteenth-century landscape painters, to the first Impressionists, the Fauves, the Expressionists, the Moderns, the post-Moderns, and all the rest. But at the end, along with the dazzle in her head, some truth would speak to her and answer her question: Do I have Art within me, or do I not?

  The journey lasted five days. Afterward she was to remember a few especially poignant moments, which in retrospect must have moved her toward her decision. One was the startling recognition of a face in a contemporary portrait of a young child lying on her mother's lap. Emma, she thought, on the day I gave her the rose dress. There was such an absolute delight in that little face, and the artist had gotten it all, the very breath of life that, while it is a joy to behold, is touched too with the moving sadness of innocence.

  How could I have failed to see myself as I really am? she asked herself. Will Miller was right. My work has never moved anyone either to tears or joy. Skill I have, but never the indefinable.

  And then there was the conversation at the Museum of Modern Art. Standing in front of Monet's Water Lilies, a young woman said to her, “It does something to you, doesn't it? If I ever have time after work, I go to look at pictures. Especially if you have things on your mind, they make you feel better, these artists.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “You wonder what it is. What is it about these flowers? Everybody paints flowers. They paint them on greeting cards, so what's the difference?”

  In Giverny, at the home of the water lilies, it had been such a glorious afternoon, and she had been so happy! But Gerald had been in a cranky rush to get it over with.

  And she stood there long after the crowd had thinned, reliving that day and thinking of many things, of how those who loved her had in their loving pride deluded her, and of how she had deluded herself into thinking that her work was better than it truly was.

  Will Miller would be surprised if he could know, although he never would know, that she was just probably going to take his advice. They had paid so surprisingly much for those dresses! Sewing was certainly not what she had hoped to do with her life, but how many people get to do what they hope they can do? And this was not a pipe dream. It was realistic.

  On the sixth day, she was ready for her final decision. Having fortified herself with catalogs, she made her choice, got into a taxi, and before she could change her mind, enrolled at a first-rate school for fashion design.

  “You're making me feel like a wayward, runaway child,” she remonstrated when she got home.

  Francine scolded, “Age has nothing to do with it. You can't blame me. Going off like that with a message about ‘needing time to think’! I had terrible thoughts that maybe you—”

  “Committed suicide? No, not at all. You should be pleased. You've told me over and over that I must do something with my time, and you were right. So now I'm doing it.”

  Francine was not that easily appeased. “You've even upset your friend here. Arnie phoned me after calling you for three days straight and getting no answer. You need to thank him.”

  Arnie, enthroned in the leather wing chair that had been Gerald's, waved thanks away. “Your mother and I had the same fear. You might as well know the truth. I was afraid because of the kids. I thought—if you've done something to yourself—that's why I flew up here. I didn't tell anybody except to say I had business in New York.”

  “I'm sorry that I've upset you all, but there's no need to fear. I would never do it. I wouldn't hurt my children like that. I suppose they're all right, or you would be telling me, Arnie?”

  “Oh, they're fine. I see them two or three times a week. We belong to the same swim club. They've been having lessons there. You should see Emma—” Embarrassed, he stopped.

  “Indeed, she should see her,” Francine said.

  A solemn silence followed. Both Francine and Arnie were staring at Hyacinth, who was staring at the floor. Without raising her head, she felt their stare, as though they were touching her with hot hands.

  Francine, breaking the silence, spoke sternly. “This whole thing seems eccentric to me. Why don't you go back to art restoration? You loved it.”

  “Because I'm barely a beginner. It takes years to become expert, and I need money.”

  “Stop the nonsense, Hyacinth. You saw the house Gerald lives in. I'm sorry, Arnie. He's your partner, but he's my enemy, and frankly, I'm surprised—don't misunderstand, I'm grateful for your kindness, but still I—”

  Arnie said firmly, “I don't take sides. Gerald knows that. I'm neutral. If I could patch things up, I would feel I had done a great thing. But so far I haven't seen any signs on either side. It's all a goddamn mystery.”

  Hyacinth looked at Arnie and at Francine. I am separated from them both, she thought. There is a wall around me. They want me to take it down so they can get through, and I can't do it. Their words strike the wall and bounce back to them.

  Arnie asked, “What about selling your pictures? I've been meaning to ask for a couple to put in my new place
. I've got a living room a mile long. I could use maybe seven or eight, depending on the size. I don't know what they're worth, but I'm no cheapskate, so you just name your price.”

  “You just go upstairs and take what you want,” Hyacinth said gently. “They're not worth much, if anything. They'll be my small way of saying thanks.”

  Francine, tapping her foot, gave notice that she was more than ordinarily agitated. “Your pictures aren't worth much, you say? But your sewing will be?”

  “I think so. I hope so.”

  “And on those thoughts and hopes you propose to give up your home, leave me and all your friends here, pull up stakes, and start off into the unknown.”

  “You forget I've done it before.”

  “There's no comparison. You had a—”

  “A husband. I know. Well, I'm learning to do without one.”

  “Not for long,” Arnie said. “Not you, Hyacinth.”

  Words like balls or stones kept bouncing against the wall. Francine's were well aimed.

  “If you sell this house, how are the children going to visit?”

  “I'll find a place in the city.”

  “To give up a house like this! I'm not giving up mine. Your father always wanted it kept as a homing place. George is coming for a week in the summer with all his crew, and Tom expects to be coming east two or three times a year on business. Besides, I have friends all over, even in England, and they like to use it as a hotel. You are making a big mistake to sell this house.”

  “I told you, I need the money to live on in New York.”

  “Permit me to disagree,” Arnie said. “Hyacinth would be smart to sell it now. This neighborhood is going downhill. They're widening the avenue, the business section is moving in this direction, and in two or three years, this house will be worth a lot less than it is now.”

  “Well, you're a clever businessman, and I'm not,” Francine admitted somewhat dubiously. “So we might as well drop the subject. My daughter has always been stubborn, and she appears to have made up her mind.”