All Things Cease to Appear

  About what?

  That I’ll kill you if I lose. He grinned sharply. That was a joke.

  I know. She tried to smile. Ha, ha.

  I have some friends—we could play doubles. I’d much rather be your partner than your opponent.

  I’d be a lot safer that way.

  True. But playing it safe can be rather dull, don’t you think?

  The overhead lights began to dim and George lowered his voice to a whisper: He got away with it, actually. I guess it’s not all that surprising when you consider what a genius he was.

  Genius or not, nobody should get away with murder.

  You’d be amazed what people get away with.

  What do you mean?

  We all do it. It’s like a little bonus, a cheesy door prize for all your good behavior. The book you borrow and never return, the tip you never gave. A friend’s shirt you forgot to give back. Getting away with something—it’s a rush. Come on, you can tell me. I know you’ve done it. Admit it.

  I can’t think of anything.

  Well, you’re more innocent than I thought. I can see you are a Very Good Girl—he enunciated each word as if it were capitalized. I recommend a swift and thorough corrupting.

  A little embarrassed, she asked, What about you?

  Me? Oh, I’m as corrupted as they come.

  I don’t believe you. You don’t look it.

  I’ve learned to blend in. It’s a survival skill. I’m like one of those pickpockets in Venice. Before you know it, you’ve got nothing left—no money, no papers, no identity.

  Sounds dangerous. I’m not sure I should be talking to you.

  Just wanted you to know what you’re getting into, he said.

  Are you planning to pick my pocket?

  I might try to get away with something.

  Such as?

  The audience erupted with applause as the speaker, a gaunt, white-haired gentleman in a herringbone suit, walked onto the stage.

  George put his mouth up against her ear. Such as this, he said, sliding his hand under her skirt as the master’s Triumphant Eros filled the screen.

  —

  FOR REASONS she didn’t entirely understand—for they were opposites, it seemed, with very different priorities—they became inseparable. She was a virgin, he exalted in his reputation as a ladies’ man. If she knew his true nature, then she ignored it, misinterpreted his self-absorption as intellect, his vanity as good breeding. He would ride her around on his handlebars, taking her to the coffeehouse on Spring Street or the Purple Pub or sometimes the VFW where the whiskey was only sixty cents a glass and they’d drink too much of it and talk about dead painters. George knew more about painters than anyone she’d ever met. He said he’d wanted to be an artist but his parents had talked him out of it. My father’s the furniture king of Connecticut, he told her. They’re hardly sentimental about the arts.

  They’d wander around the Clark, kissing in the elegant, unmonitored rooms, the walls painted austere Berkshires colors: pewter, leek-white, goldenrod. Side by side they’d gaze dreamily at Corot or Boudin or Monet or Pissarro, her head on his shoulder, taking in his reedy tobacco scent. They’d visit the speedway in West Lebanon, sitting high in the stands in the blinding sun, counting the screaming revolutions of the cars, the metal bleachers vibrating under their legs, the smell of gasoline rising off the tarmac. They walked through woods and grassy meadows, making whistles out of fat strands of grass, kissing under the lazy muzzles of cows.

  Though not especially handsome, he reminded her of someone Modigliani might’ve painted, angular and grim, with thinning hair and rosebud lips and tobacco-stained teeth. His wry intelligence was at once pretentious and intimidating, but he made her feel beautiful, like she was somebody else, somebody better. For a few heady weeks she lost herself in the dream of love. In her mind, he was a version of Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless, a movie they’d seen together, and she was Jean Seberg in her striped sailor shirts, wistful and fresh and in love. George somehow brought fantasy and spectacle to the world, allowing her to forget the split-level house in Grafton, the tartan walls of her bedroom, the green shag carpet.

  They made love for the first time in a motel in Lanesborough with tiny white cottages scattered on a hill. Theirs had a little porch where they sat for a while, drinking bottles of root beer from the machine, and he talked about Mark Rothko, one of those rare painters, he said, who made you feel something that wasn’t always so good, something like the truth. She took his hand but he shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, and then they went in and took off their clothes.

  Congratulations, he said afterward, lighting their cigarettes. You’ve been officially indoctrinated into a life of sin and debauchery. He kissed her unhurriedly. I hope it was worth it.

  It was, she told him.

  But she honestly didn’t know. She didn’t know much about sex. In high school, there’d been fits of clumsy groping in damp basements; she’d had a few serious make-out sessions with a boy from her English class, but he’d dropped her for another girl. And then she’d met George. Unlike the drawn-out seduction in movies, her deflowering had lasted less than ten minutes. There were no operatic cries of ecstasy, or anything close to the tormented lovers in Splendor in the Grass. When she was twelve or so, her mother let her stay up late one night to watch it, and she’d been smitten by Warren Beatty and cried herself to sleep because his romance hadn’t worked out and poor Natalie Wood, who’d been so very good, had to go to an asylum, while the love of her life married somebody else, even though everybody knew they belonged together. She wasn’t all that sure she belonged with George.

  Then why do you look so guilty?

  The nuns were very thorough.

  You’re a big girl now, Catherine, he said. There’s more to life than doing what you’re told.

  The comment made her feel stupid. It made her resent how she’d been raised, her faith. She sat up, holding the sheet over her breasts, and put out the cigarette. I don’t even smoke, she said.

  He only glanced at her.

  She watched him a minute, his cold, brown eyes. We’re very different, she said finally.

  He nodded. Yes, we are.

  Do you even believe in God?

  No. Why should I?

  She couldn’t seem to answer.

  Why does it matter so much, anyway?

  It just does.

  You didn’t choose to believe in God. It’s something you’ve been told to do, like putting a napkin on your lap. You’re just falling in line.

  I don’t have to defend myself, she said. I’m not exactly in the minority.

  That’s for sure, he said arrogantly.

  He stood up and pulled on his shirt. When she looked at him now in the dreary room, he seemed anonymous, she thought. He could be anyone. What do you believe in, then?

  Not a whole lot, he answered. Sorry to disappoint you. He pulled on his jacket. I’ll wait outside.

  Through the sheer curtain she could see him standing on the porch under the small yellow light, smoking. She stood at the mirror and brushed her hair. She didn’t really look any different. In her mind, she reviewed the momentous event: how he’d touched her, held her firmly in place and entered her as she’d lain there, open to him, searching his face. He wasn’t looking at her, she recalled, but at the greasy headboard as it knocked against the wall.

  2

  IN THE FALL, they went their separate ways. He was in graduate school now; he claimed he barely had time for meals. He’d call every Sunday, but she suspected he was dating other girls. She put him out of her mind and focused on her studies and, after Williams, enrolled in a master’s program at SUNY Buffalo, to study conservation. She moved into a house with four other students and took a part-time job at a bakery. She had nearly forgotten about George Clare when, out of the blue, he called her. He’d gotten her number from her mother, he told her. He sounded different, she thought, older. He invited her down to the city and, on a rare and uncharacte
ristic impulse, she decided to make the trip.

  They met at a small café uptown where he bought her lunch. You’ve been on my mind, he told her, taking her hand. They spent the afternoon on a blanket in the park, kissing under the trees. He talked about his work, the thesis he planned to write, his ambition to be a scholar, to teach.

  They started seeing each other again. Once a month, they’d meet halfway at a cheap motel in Binghamton and make love till the windows fogged, obscuring the world outside. Lying naked under the stiff Cloroxed sheets, smoking, staring at the stains on the ceiling, they’d dissect their unpromising future together: he came from money, she was working-class; he rejected religion, she was devout; he had no interest in marriage, she wanted a husband and kids and the white picket fence.

  Something kept them together, frustration possibly. Like they were two parts of a troubling equation that neither could find the answer to. It was out there somewhere, in infinity, she often thought. Maybe they’d never find it.

  Up in Buffalo, she tried dating other boys, but George, like a tedious splinter, was the one in her head. Occasionally, when she could afford the fare, she’d visit him in the city, wearing her signature black turtleneck and wrap-skirt, red lipstick, her hair twisted up in a barrette. He was renting a room in a frat house on 113th Street that resembled sailor’s quarters, with a narrow twin bed, just off the common room where the frat boys shot pool and dabbled in disorderly conduct, abrupt disruptions of drunken ceremony that always ended badly. In bed, he was greedy and possessive, provoked, it seemed, by the percussive brutality of the pool table, the smacking collision of balls before they slammed into pockets and the uproarious chorus that followed. When they’d finally emerge from the room, attracting the frat boys’ snickering gazes, she felt as if she were on display. They’d go to O’Brien’s, a dark, wood-paneled, smoke-filled neighborhood bar that was favored by students from his department, a solemn, cautious group who would drink cheap beer and eat oysters and analyze the tortured geniuses of Western art, the fanatics, the fakes and the drunks, until, at closing, they were herded out into the street.

  Toward the end of the spring semester, he called and said he had something important to discuss. Not over the phone, he added, and invited her to come down. On the bus, it occurred to her that he was going to propose. But when she arrived, it soon became clear he had other plans. He took her to a dimly lit bar and told her he was ending the relationship. With the assurance of an undertaker, he gave his reason. His program was demanding, he needed to focus on his work and, more important, they essentially had opposing philosophies. I’m letting you go, he said, as if she were some expendable employee.

  She walked to Port Authority alone, inured to the wind, the trash blowing against her ankles, content to inhale the stink of the buses as she wandered up to her gate. She wasn’t smart enough for him, she told herself. Or pretty enough. Later, on the trip home, she became ill. Overcome with a sudden nausea, she vomited in the bathroom, tossed from side to side in the tiny compartment. She looked at herself in the grimy mirror and knew, at once, what was wrong. Back in her room, she called George to give him the news.

  He was quiet for a moment and then said, I know a place you can go. It’s legal now.

  I can’t do that, she said after a long pause. It’s against my religion. You don’t have to marry me.

  That’s very noble of you, Catherine, but I don’t do anything because I have to.

  She waited for him to say more, but he hung up. Weeks passed and she didn’t hear from him. At the bakery, the smells of powdered sugar and vanilla made her sick. Future brides would order their cakes, zealous and determined, their eyes glazed with pride and something else—some deep, unspoken compliance. When she wasn’t at work, she took to her bed, incapacitated by the guilty terror of becoming a single mother. She knew her parents would disown her. She’d have to get a job somewhere, go on welfare or food stamps, whatever women in her situation had to do.

  Then, two months later, on a rainy August morning, he showed up at her room with a dozen roses and a wedding ring. Pack your things, he said. You’re moving to New York.

  —

  THEY WERE MARRIED in her hometown church. They held the reception in the grange next door, which was all her parents could afford. George’s mother had her nose up; she was French and had black hair like Cleopatra and a smoker’s voice. His father was tall and square-shouldered and had the same mud-puddle eyes as George.

  After the wedding, George took her to their gray saltbox on the Connecticut shore. His parents were a breezy couple, terribly pleased with themselves in their oxford shirts, whale-dappled trousers and Top-Siders, drinking gin-and-tonics. They were, she thought, like people in a cigarette commercial. Their house was full of breakable things, with not a single object out of place. She felt out of place, as if George had brought his parents some ridiculous gift.

  From the living-room windows she could see George’s boat moored a few yards from shore. He wanted to take her sailing. I don’t know, she said, a little afraid. I’m only in my third month.

  You’ll be fine. You’re in very good hands.

  They sailed in an inlet, then out to a small island, where they beached the boat and went exploring. Nobody was there, only the sprawling trees, the warm sand, the birds. His mother had packed them a picnic, sandwiches and iced tea and cold beer for George. Later in the afternoon, the wind picked up, the waves rocked the boat—whitecaps, George called them. They swelled up and broke on the deck. The current was strong. He’d have to tack strategically now, he explained, in order to get back. He pulled in the sails and the boat reeled up on a keel.

  She gripped the side, terrified. George, she said. Please.

  This is fun. This is what sailing’s all about.

  It’s too rough, she said, clinging to the side. I feel sick.

  Not in the boat, he shouted, pushing her head down and holding her there, hard. Through the blur of sickness, she became aware that he was right behind her, his hand on her neck, and she sensed in its sudden tentative weight that he was considering something, and then the boat dipped again and she went over, smacking the water and sinking under the surface, her hands floating up, the current sweeping her under the hull, the air squeezing out of her. She could see the boat sliding away, slow as a parade float—until, as if a dark hood had been pulled over her head, she blacked out. A minute later, or maybe seconds, she felt her abrupt transition back into the world as he pulled her up, placed her hands firmly on the side and shouted that she should hold on, for Christ’s sake, just hold on.

  Somehow, he hauled her onto the deck. It was a kind of birth, she thought.

  You’re all right, he said, dripping over her. Jesus Christ. Don’t ever fucking do that again. You could’ve drowned.

  That night, in his boyhood room, she lay in bed alone, listening to her husband relay the story of the accident to his parents downstairs, conveying the succession of events in a strangely methodical manner, as if he’d thought it all through ahead of time.

  She’s a lucky girl, his mother said.

  When she called the next day, hoping for sympathy, her mother snapped, You had no business going out on a boat in your condition. What kind of a foolish thing was that to do?

  3

  THEY HAD a daughter, Frances, named for her great-aunt, who’d had some success as an opera singer. Frances had never married and died unexpectedly in her forties. Visiting her aunt in the city had been the highlight of Catherine’s childhood, but her mother disavowed her, speaking her name in a grave whisper, as if she were terminally ill. Frances was the only woman in Catherine’s family who’d had a career, whose life wasn’t determined by the needs and interests of others. So for her, now beginning to understand her own limitations, naming her baby Frances was a private victory.

  They bought a crib, and George took hours putting it together. Next time try reading the instructions, she scolded.

  Being a mother was hard work, especiall
y when the father was little help. She supposed she was grateful to him, that’s what she told herself. She didn’t ask for much.

  They had a small collection of friends they’d meet at restaurants near the university, mostly people from George’s department. As a couple, they projected a sense of domestic ease, their cordiality routine, habitual. But in truth they rarely spoke of anything beyond the superficial. He rarely confided in her, and in turn she neglected to ask any probing questions; perhaps, on some level, she knew he continually deceived her and somehow could not admit to it. Her personal pride wouldn’t allow it. Instead, she drew conclusions from the way he looked and moved, the gloom in his eyes and, if they chanced to make love, his aftermath-smile, as if he’d done her a favor.

  As the months passed, she concluded that he was living two lives—one with her and Franny, in which he was mildly, distractedly engaged, and another out in the city, where he could pretend to be his old self, going around in a seedy suede coat from the Salvation Army, stinking of cigarettes. Sometimes he’d come in late. Sometimes he’d be drunk. Once, in a frenzy of alcohol, he told her he didn’t deserve her. She could have said something to confirm this fact, but that wasn’t how she’d been raised. While he slept, she’d lie awake planning her escape, though when she thought of raising Franny on her own, living on half his paltry fellowship, facing the shameful consequences of divorce, she lost her nerve. Women in Catherine’s family didn’t leave their husbands.

  They were like two commuters, randomly paired on a train, their destination undeclared. She felt she hardly knew him.

  She called Agnes and begged her to visit, and for a few weeks her sister took up residence on the couch, despite George’s obvious dissatisfaction, claiming, after only a few days, that she’d overstayed her welcome. It’s having an effect on my work, he told Catherine.

  Too bad, she thought.

  Happily, for the first time as adults, she and her sister were getting to know each other. Agnes made a fuss over Franny, buying her toys and books, playing with her for hours on end. She’d listen tirelessly to Catherine’s worries and complaints.