Solstice Read online

  Monica took away the watercolor as if she feared her friend’s simple presence might do injury to it. She spent some minutes hunting down a suitable frame, feeling wonderfully triumphant, elated. Had she been angling to be given the painting, after all?—had it all been some sort of game, a pretense, not only her own high moral tone but Sheila’s initial contempt? But no—Sheila had come close to snatching the watercolor out of her fingers and tearing it in two. But yes—that would have been part of the game, that violence. And Monica’s scream of protest.

  Afterward she said: “But Sheila, it isn’t fair—what can I give you in return? I don’t have anything of value—I don’t have anything you want.”

  The remark hung awkwardly between them. Monica had spoken without thinking—warmly, impetuously, uncharacteristically—and there was nothing Sheila could say. Yet she couldn’t remain silent because her silence would be an insult. So she murmured, finally, embarrassed: “Friendship isn’t a matter of barter, is it?”

  6

  The only eccentric thing about her,” Monica said stiffly, the next time she was asked about Sheila Trask, “—is her generosity. I’ve never known anyone like her.”

  7

  Ariadne’s thread: the labyrinth as a state of mind, a region of the soul: heroic effort without any Hero at its center. (“This is only about Ariadne’s thread, this has nothing to do with Theseus,” Sheila said angrily.)

  Monica stared, Monica stared hard, but the shifting angles and planes of paint, the subtle gradations of color, conformed to a structural grid she could not quite understand. She felt its logic—its inner sense. Or told herself she did.

  But one day she made a mistake. A real blunder. Speaking warmly and effusively, chattering away as, in the past, Sheila had seemed to like her to chatter, she happened to say, “Why don’t you stop right at this point, don’t do another thing”—indicating a triptych on which Sheila had been working for the past several days. And Sheila had gone white with rage. She had barely been able to speak.

  Monica sensed her tactlessness—her frank stupidity—at once; and hurriedly backed down. Of course Sheila knew what she was doing, what she wanted, Monica knew nothing, Monica was being intrusive and idiotic and was very, very sorry.

  Afterward she asked Sheila shyly whether she had really been so angry as she’d appeared.

  Sheila said: “Don’t ever tempt me. Don’t. Don’t.”

  Monica began to acquire an appetite for her friend’s studio. That place of strain and tension and raw nerves. That place of sudden laughter, fresh-brewed coffee, Danish pastry devoured ravenously—Sheila’s hands trembling because she hadn’t eaten in a very long time: and Monica proved her “angel of mercy.” (“But how can you go without eating for so long?” Monica asked, mystified. “Do you simply forget?—does your body allow you to forget?”)

  Sheila Trask’s studio, that place of exuberant high spirits, that place of secrecy and refuge . . . Sheila had a telephone but it was nearly always unplugged. (Sometimes, late at night, she plugged it in, she said, so that she could dial to learn what time it was! . . . she didn’t allow any clock or watch in the studio.) The main house was kept in a reasonable state of cleanliness by Sheila’s housekeeper and one or two cleaning women who came out once a week; there were a few groundsmen and handymen, irregularly employed; and a teenaged boy came over from a neighboring farm to help out with Sheila’s three horses. But none of these people ever approached the carriage house. And even when she knew she was expected, Monica often felt an unreasonable sense of trespass, almost of danger, as she ascended the stairs.

  For what if the door were locked against her? And Sheila, though inside, refused to open it—?

  Monica acquired an appetite for the harsh astringent odors of paint and turpentine, she imagined they cleared her head, made her eyes water so that her vision came more sharply into focus. She no longer minded the filthy rags underfoot, the torn newspapers, shards of broken crockery, an old sweater of Sheila’s stiff with dirt which had been lying beside a chair for weeks. And the constantly varying—the unpredictably varying—degrees of light from the skylight fascinated her. She theorized that all romance is light—light’s gentle diminution, light’s raw intensity. Sheila Trask standing exposed in the pitiless white light of a winter noontide was not a beautiful woman—age showed shockingly in her face, even in the lusterless frizzy aureole of her hair. But Sheila Trask standing in the slow-fading light of an overcast afternoon possessed (how suddenly!—how totally without her knowledge) a solemn ascetic beauty Monica found enthralling.

  Ariadne’s thread held tightly, prayerfully, in the fingers. The labyrinth as a state of mind, a permanent state of mind. Monica wandered in it, utterly content.

  But the secrets were all Sheila’s. Sheila held herself rigid and surrendered nothing. Smiles came unbidden, laughter was sudden and sometimes a little shrill, excluding Monica. Sheila boasted that her life—like her very body—existed at a distance from her. It was hers, but not her.

  Monica laughed uneasily, pretending to understand. (“What did you mean, Sheila, when you said that something had happened to you—to your body—around the time of your husband’s death?—and that your attitude toward painting changed afterward?” she asked. And Sheila replied without expression, carefully: “When did I ever tell you that?”—and a moment later added: “That’s bullshit.”)

  But she was insensitive, even ruthless, about Monica’s private life. In fact it came to seem, as time passed, that Monica’s past was a possession or privilege of Sheila’s, to be dissected and analyzed at length. Especially if the hour was late. Especially if Sheila’s work had not gone well that day. If they were alone together in Monica’s living room with a fire burning—an apple-wood fire Sheila had provided, and kept going—or in Sheila’s country kitchen, white stucco walls and blue and white ceramic tile, copper utensils hanging from a rack, a near-depleted bottle of red wine on the table between them. It might be twenty after twelve, it might be five minutes to one, Sheila restless and impatient and provoking because she’d had too much to drink, Monica herself a little drunk, surprising herself by speaking in a voice she didn’t always recognize. It was an oddity of these visits—she would always remember it—that Sheila’s Irish setter Siegmund would wriggle by inches across the kitchen floor and come to rest, lightly wheezing, with his heavy head on Monica’s foot. (“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Sheila asked doubtfully. “He’s almost twelve years old—he’s lonely, he’s affectionate—very sweet—but sometimes rather tiresome. Do you see those eyes?—more human than mine.”)

  Sheila asked questions but (so Monica told herself) she wasn’t prying. She was simply a friend who was very interested in Monica and wasn’t it flattering, to know oneself a subject of interest?—when life was so comfortable and routine otherwise.

  Tell me about your marriage, Sheila would urge, lighting a cigarette and watching her closely, pitilessly—tell me why you want to dismiss it as a “mistake.” Why you don’t want to take responsibility for it. Why you imagine you have walked away free.

  Monica laughed and pressed the backs of her hands against her face. Was she drunk? So warm, so warmly befuddled? She felt no danger. Well—perhaps she felt some danger. She spoke of her marriage as if it had happened to another person, a fool, a deserving victim, a very young woman. She should have known: Harold had been so amusing in his contempt for homely women, or unkempt women, or women who wore too much makeup, or women whose legs or underarms were stubbled and not smoothly shaven. An affront to him. Yes clearly: an affront to any man who chanced to look in their direction.

  “But now you’re free,” Sheila said. There was a nudge of irony in her voice but her dark eyes were fixed compassionately on Monica’s face.

  “I’m free,” Monica said lightly. “I’m living in a place in Pennsylvania I didn’t know existed a year ago.”

  “And are you happy?” Sheila asked.

  “I’m happy,” Monica said, again lightly.
“I’m very happy.”

  “Do you know why?” Sheila asked, watching her closely.

  Monica drained her glass. Her voice was brave though faintly trembling. “Because I’m here,” she said. “In Glenkill. In my own life. My name is Jensen again—it was always Jensen. I don’t need to care whether I have a ‘husband’—whether he’s faithful or unfaithful—whether he loves me too much—as he thought at one point he did—or doesn’t love me at all—”

  Sheila interrupted to ask whether Monica’s husband had actually been unfaithful to her; and really, why had it mattered? “Men are always unfaithful to women in one way or another,” Sheila said.

  “Did you feel that way when your husband was unfaithful to you?” Monica asked sharply.

  Sheila shrugged her shoulders. She smiled and showed her damp predator’s teeth. “I don’t remember,” she said.

  Monica told herself she should leave: it was time to go home: it was past the time to go home: she’d feel wretched in the morning. But she stayed. The Irish setter’s chin resting on her foot was so warm, so comforting, her head ached half-pleasantly, a low dull throbbing at the base of her skull. She stayed until two, two-ten, two-twenty. A freezing rain had begun, pelting the windows. She found herself speaking rapidly and a little crazily about her marriage. Yes it had been this, yes she’d told herself it was that, no she had been lying, yes she had been lying, the secrets were so clumsy, so obvious, why was she crying?—making a fool of herself?—drunk and maudlin as her husband had always detested in women: and of course her soul was as shallow as a tin spoon. Sheila had seen through her at once, Sheila couldn’t be deceived. . . . She heard herself saying that her marriage had been doomed because it hadn’t been blessed—there was such a thing as “blessed”—she didn’t know how to explain and she wasn’t religious any longer but she did believe—didn’t Sheila?—that some relationships were blessed and others were cursed. And you always know, Monica declared, her voice slurred, you always know.

  Then she was speaking of blessings and curses. And the strain of keeping a delusion intact: “All your strength goes into it, it’s like the first twelve weeks of a pregnancy, the new life feeding off yours. . . .” Then she was crying again. Or she had been crying all along, rubbing her fist into her eye as she’d seen Sheila do, as she had done as a child. Her nose running and her cheeks hot and damp and her throat constricted with pain. He had made her have the abortion, she said. No he had only wanted her to have the abortion, it had been his wish. She couldn’t see how she was to blame but he blamed her. But she was to blame. He knew. He guessed. The stratagem was hers, the trick. To get pregnant, to make a change in their lives, to force the issue. I will force the issue, she had thought, manic with excitement. Then, afterward, the guilt—the luxury of guilt—sucking and gnawing on guilt—Monica weeping hysterically in Harold’s arms because they were murderers because they were trapped together in an act of supreme significance because it was all a ruse and Monica was playacting Monica hadn’t loved him from the start Monica hadn’t been capable of love but had quite liked being loved. “It was really all my fault,” she said, “—but the sympathy was for me: he had ‘made’ me have an abortion and then he ‘stopped loving’ me.”

  She was shamefaced, crying, laughing in surprised hiccuping gulps, she hadn’t known until this moment, Sheila staring at her, Sheila leaning forward staring at her, what a liar she was: and how perceptive her husband had been, to know. Even as she wept. Even as she coiled upon herself wanting to die. Near the end she claimed that she loved him after all and he said, “That’s a mistake, then, don’t,” then shortly afterward he said, “No, you’re lying again,” and she had thought her heart might be wrenched out of her body. It was as if the embryonic life—her life—had been sucked out of her body a second time.

  She wept, hugging herself. Her breasts were aching. Her belly, her loins. After a moment Sheila reached out and touched the scar on Monica’s jaw, one tentative forefinger, direct, not especially gentle: “Did he have anything to do with this?—I’ve always wondered.”

  Monica drew away at once.

  No, it had been an accident.

  A hot blush rose from her throat: it had been an accident.

  —They were quarreling and he must have shoved her—half-sobbing himself, furious, exhausted—he shoved her and she stumbled and fell and struck her jaw on the sharp edge of a counter—no it hadn’t been deliberate—not entirely deliberate—the pain was remarkable—the pain was a stroke of lightning—and he was as appalled as she: blood streaming down her throat and chest, soaking into her clothes. They weren’t the sort of people who did such things.

  She couldn’t stop crying. Sheila rose without a word and, stooping, cradled Monica’s head in her arms, rocked her slightly, comforted her. Monica was utterly helpless, she couldn’t have said where she was, weeping, clutching at someone, a presence, a strength, so much superior to her own. She smelled tobacco and wine and stale perspiration—a muscular warmth—merging with the old stench of panic and blood, the ache along her jaw, memory stitched in flesh.

  Afterward she thought, not knowing whether to be ashamed: Of course Sheila knew about the scar all along.

  II.

  The Mirror-Ghoul

  1

  Who are her friends, Monica?—I mean besides you,” Jill Starkie asked one evening at dinner, at the Starkies’ house on the Academy campus. She was wearing a kind of Japanese kimono that opened slightly as she leaned forward, releasing a sweet earnest scent of lilies of the valley. As the evening’s hostess she had been smiling for some time and now her pink-glossed lips were bracketed by ghostly smiles. When Monica stared at the tablecloth before her—she’d been making faint indentations in the Irish linen with her fork—and could not seem to think of an adequate reply, Jill said, persisting, leaning farther forward: “But she has friends, hasn’t she? I mean—besides you.”

  “Of course she has friends,” Monica said. But her mind had gone blank: she could think of a half-dozen persons whom she had met at Edgemont, casually and very informally; she recalled Sheila mentioning the names of friends in New York and Key West and Mexico and the Costa del Sol and Morocco—friends, fellow artists, companions of her late husband’s. But none of the names came to mind as Jill Starkie and the others at the table looked at her, waiting.

  “There used to be odd stories about her, lovers of hers who turned up at the wrong time,” another guest at the table said, “if we’re talking about the same woman: Morton Flaxman’s widow?”

  “Sheila Trask,” Jill said in a tone of light, animated reproach. “You must know her name, David, she’s nearly as accomplished as her husband, in fact I prefer her work—don’t make a face, Brian, I do—what I’ve seen of it, I mean—his is so overbearing and monolithic, if that’s the word—so aggressively monumental—and so overpriced—”

  At this point James Starkie interrupted helpfully to say, in a slightly too-hearty voice, that Monica was a friend of Sheila Trask’s.

  “Yes, Monica has become friendly with Sheila Trask,” Jill repeated, speaking a little breathlessly. Her nervous fingers fluttered at her throat and an enormous stone, a diamond?—a zircon?—winked and gleamed on her right hand. “So we were thinking—I mean, I was thinking—just the other day—I haven’t had time to speak with you about this, Monica—but I was thinking it would be an excellent opportunity—I mean for Glenkill—for the school—to invite her over to speak to the boys, the boys who are interested in art—and we could all have dinner together—here, or at the Greenes’—I know Harry and Ruth would be delighted.” She paused for the briefest of moments but only to draw breath. “. . . Some of you remember when Morton Flaxman visited?—a long time ago—James and I were very new—Mr. Flaxman gave a marvelous lecture—a kind of free-association talk—he had a wonderful sense of humor—salty and profound—of course he did drink a bit—but he was really a genius, as everyone says—so much energy and enthusiasm and expertise—though, as I say, I think
his work is a bit overrated—and certainly overpriced. Some of us couldn’t believe what the trustees paid him for that piece by the library!—of course it was commissioned—and I suppose it was very special—but, still—prices in the art world are so astronomical, I suppose. I wonder if Sheila Trask commands that sort of fee? I suppose not—considering she’s younger—and a woman. It would be fascinating to hear her speak and to become acquainted with her, wouldn’t it? I don’t believe she came along with her husband that evening,” Jill said, glancing at her husband, frowning, “—no, I’m certain she didn’t. The Greenes invited her, of course, but for some reason she didn’t come.”

  Monica felt obliged to speak, to defend her friend. But for some reason—a minute streak of malice, perhaps?—she said nothing. She was making crosshatched indentations in the tablecloth with her dessert fork.

  “They’re all a bit reclusive, the artists we’ve known,” James Starkie said. “Even the artists who’ve taught here. You have to respect that—it’s part of their nature. I respect that.”

  “I respect it too, James,” Jill said quickly, “but Sheila Trask lives so close by, it’s a pity not to draw upon her. If she met our students and saw how bright they are, how talented, and how sweet—aren’t they sweet, some of them?—I know she’d be impressed. Do you think you might bring up the subject to her, Monica?—for sometime after the Christmas break?”

  “Sheila has a new show in February,” Monica said. “I really don’t think she’d have time to visit us.”

  “Then after February, of course,” Jill said, smiling at Monica as if Monica had said something particularly obtuse. “There’s all the time in the world and I know Harry and Ruth would be delighted. . . .”