Belinda Read online

  I smiled, but her comment made me feel uncomfortable. Settings for a play, Alex talking about Mother’s room in New Orleans—I wanted to put all that out of my mind.

  AFTER a quick shower she came down looking splendid. She had on a beautiful old tweed suit, a little worn in spots but exquisitely tailored. She looked very jaunty in the little tapered jacket. Snow white turtleneck sweater underneath. Pair of vintage alligator pumps probably made before she was born.

  I had never seen her like this before, without a costume. And she was the shining expensive girl I’d only glimpsed that first afternoon, her hair brushed free, her makeup only a little blush on her cheeks and the perfectly applied candy lipstick.

  She gobbled a bowl of cereal, smoking all the time, belted down a Scotch with precious little water, in spite of my protests, and then we took off in the late afternoon sunshine for Union Street.

  I was pretty high from the lack of sleep. I felt wonderful, maybe even as wonderful as she looked.

  “I want you to know something,” I said, as we were coasting along Divisadero Street. “No matter what I said about never showing those paintings, it’s pretty damned exciting for me doing them.” Silence.

  I glanced over to see her smiling at me in a rather knowing way, her hair blowing softly around her face in the breeze, her eyes glistening. She took a drag off her cigarette and the smoke disappeared.

  “Look, you’re the artist,” she said finally. “I can’t tell you what to do with your pictures. I shouldn’t have tried.”

  But it had a defeated sound to it. She had moved in with me, she wasn’t going to fight with me anymore, she felt she couldn’t. “Say what you really feel,” I said.

  “OK. What’s the big excuse for never showing all those others? The stuff with the bugs and the rats?”

  Here we go again, I thought. Everybody asks. They have to. And so would she, of course.

  “I know all your work,” she said. “I’ve seen it in Berlin and Paris and I had the big coffee-table book before I—”

  “Ran away from home.”

  “—Right. And I used to have every book you ever did, even the early stuff, The Night before Christmas and The Nutcracker. I never saw anything like those grotesque things back there, the ones with the houses falling apart. And you’ve dated them all. They go all the way back to the sixties.

  So why are they locked up like that?”

  “Not fit to show,” I said.

  “Ruin the old career because the little girls would scream ‘Eeek, a mouse!’”

  “You know much about painting?” I asked her.

  “Probably more than you think,” she said with a little teenage bravado. Just a tiny crack in the adult poise. Subtle lift to her baby-soft chin as she exhaled the smoke. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Grew up in the Prado for starters,” she said. “Used to go there every day with my nurse, practically memorized Hieronymus Bosch. Spent a couple of summers in Florence with a Nanny who didn’t want to do anything but go to the Uffizi.”

  “And you liked it?”

  “Loved it. Loved the Vatican, too. When I was ten, I used to hang out at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. I’d rather go there or the Pompidou than go to the movies. I was sick of the movies. Damned sick of the movies. When I was in London, it was the Tate and the British Museum. I’ve put in my time on capital A art.”

  “Pretty impressive,” I said.

  We were making all the green lights, and the sad, faded Victorians were giving our now to the restored mansions of the Marina. Ahead was the sight that never fails to stun me, the distant mountains of Marin under a perfect sky, cradling the brilliantly blue water of San Francisco Bay.

  “All I’m trying to say is, I’m no Valley girl who can’t tell a Mondrian from a place mat.”

  I broke up. “That puts you ahead of me,” I said, “by a long way. I don’t know what the hell to think about abstract art. I never did.”

  “You’re a primitive, you know it?” she said. “A primitive who knows how to draw. But back to the roach and rat paintings—”

  “You sound like Newsweek magazine,” I said. “And you’re hurting my feelings. Little girls shouldn’t do that to old men.”

  “Did Newsweek really say that?”

  “Newsweek and Time and Artforum and Artweek and Art in America and Vogue and Vanity Fair. And God knows who else, and now even the love of my life.”

  She gave me a little polite laugh.

  “And let me tell you something else,” I said. “I don’t understand Andy Blatky’s sculptures any-more than I do Mondrian. So don’t get me into any over-hearable discussions in the gallery. I’ll make a fool of myself. Abstract art is just plain over my head.”

  She laughed in a sweet genuine way, but she was definitely surprised by what I was saying. Then she said:

  “Soon as I’ve had a look around the gallery, I’ll answer any questions you might have.”

  “Thanks, I knew I was a good judge of character. I can spot a girl who’s made the grand tour when I see one. And I bet you thought it was your charm.”

  Union Street was bustling with the usual sunny day expensive shopping crowd. Florists, gift shops, ice cream parlors swam with well-heeled tourists and locals. This was the place to buy a silk-screened hand towel, every brand of semisoft cheese known to the Western world, a painted egg. Even the corner grocery had turned its fruits and vegetables into artifacts, heaping them into pyramids in baskets. The fern bars and the outside caf6s were packed.

  The gallery doors were open. People blocked the busy sidewalk—usual mixture of the bohemian and the well to do complete with the inevitable plastic glasses of white wine. I slowed, looking for a parking space.

  “OK,” she said, tapping my arm. “I’ve done the grand tour and I know the territory. Now back to the rat and roach paintings. Why are they locked up?”

  “All right. The stuff looks good, but it lacks something,” I said. “It’s an easy kind of ugliness. The pictures don’t mean like my books mean.” She didn’t say anything right away.

  “It’s seductive, but it isn’t finished, and if you look at it more clearly, you’ll see that I’m right.”

  “It’s not just seductive, Jeremy, it’s more interesting,” she said.

  I had spotted a parking spot right on Union. Now the trick was to get into it. She was silent while I pulled up, then back, then angled, slamming the bumper in front of me only twice.

  I turned off the ignition. I was aware that I felt very uncomfortable. “That is not true,” I said.

  “Jeremy,” she said, “everybody knows what you’ve done, transcending the children’s books, making art and all that.”

  “Newsweek magazine again,” I said.

  “But the little girls in your books aren’t even in original clothes. They’re in drag in a way, all got up like Victorian kids, the whole framework is Victorian—it’s Lang and Rackham and Greenaway and you know it.”

  “Watch your mouth, Belinda,” I said. I was kidding. But underneath I didn’t like her challenging me. “The girls aren’t in drag,” I said. “They’re in dream clothes. It’s all dream images. When you understand that, you’ll understand why the books work the way they do.”

  “Well, all I know is, the rat and roach paintings are original. They’re crazy and completely new.”

  Again I didn’t respond. We were sitting with the sun coming down warmly on the black leather cockpit of the little car, the sky above blue and open. I wanted to argue, but then again I didn’t.

  “You know,” I said, “sometimes I think it’s a hell of a mess. I mean the whole thing. Books, publishing, the critics. I think it’s a series of traps. And what makes me mad about my friends always praising those rat and roach pictures to the stars is this: I know they don’t work. And nobody wishes more than I do that they did. If I thought they’d blow the lid off for me, I would have shown them a long time ago.” It felt like taking a deep breath to admit all that. “What do you mean, ‘blow
the lid off’?” she asked.

  I thought for a second. I watched her light another one of the clove cigarettes, and I gestured for her to give me one. She gave me a light from her own.

  “I don’t know exactly,” I said, looking into her eyes and trying not to be distracted by how pretty she was. “Sometimes I feel reckless about it all. I feel like just—throwing it all up.”

  “But how?”

  “I told you. I don’t know. But I wish something violent would happen, something unplanned and crazy. I wish I could just walk away from it all—you know, like one of those painters who fakes his suicide or something so he can slide off and go all the way back to square one as somebody else. If I were a writer, I’d invent a pen name. I’d get out.”

  She studied me, not saying anything. But I don’t think she understood. How could she? I didn’t understand myself.

  “Sometimes,” I went on, sort of taking advantage of her silence, “sometimes I think my greatest achievement has been to make success out of a failure, to make an evasion into art.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then she nodded.

  “And what makes me mad,” I said, “is when people point out the failure involved as if I don’t know it. And when they don’t recognize the power of the art I’ve made.”

  She took that in. Then she said:

  “So you’re telling me to get off your case.”

  “Maybe. Maybe what I’m saying is that if we’re going to really know each other for a long time, get used to me. Get used to the evasion. It’s me.”

  Again she smiled, nodded. She said, “OK.”

  I got out of the car, and she was out before I could come around to open the door for her. I kissed her. She slipped her arm in mine, and we moved into the crowd in front of the gallery. I was getting addicted to these damned cigarettes.

  Through the open doors I could see the spartan white rooms and Andy Blatky’s mammoth enameled sculptures exquisitely lighted on their severe white rectangular pedestals. How hard this must be for Andy, I thought, watching the crowd flow and shift, backs often turned to the works themselves, glances almost covert as if it wasn’t proper to admire the exhibit. I had the urge to turn around and split. But I wasn’t going to do that.

  We went through the first room and into an open courtyard, and here was a giant work, its baked pearlescent surface seemingly alive in the sun, its bulbous arms almost tenderly embracing each other. Modern art, I thought bitterly. I love it because Andy did it, and it is beautiful, it really is, this huge, muscular, powerful-looking thing, but what the hell does it mean.

  “I wish I did understand it all,” I muttered, still holding tight to Belinda. “I wish I was connected. I wish I wasn’t just a primitive to these people, just a primitive who knew how to draw. Roaches, rats, dolls, kids—”

  “Jeremy, I didn’t mean that,” she said suddenly, tenderly.

  “No, honey, I know you didn’t. I was thinking about the other two thousand people who’ve said it. I was thinking about the way I always feel at moments like this, kind of on the outside.”

  I wanted to touch Andy’s sculpture, to run my hands all over it, but I didn’t know if that was allowed. And then I spotted Andy himself in the room behind the courtyard, sort of slumped against the wall. Anybody would have known he was the artist. He was the only one wearing sneakers and a fatigue jacket. He was stroking his small black rabbinical-style beard, eyes vague behind tiny wire-rimmed coin-sized glasses. He looked really upset.

  I headed for him, vaguely aware that Belinda had veered off in another direction, and by the time I was shaking his hand, she was lost in the crowd.

  “Andy, it’s great,” I told him. “Terrific mounting, everything. The turnout looks awfully good, too.”

  He knew I didn’t really understand his stuff, never had. But he was glad to see me, and he started mumbling right off about the damned gallery and how they were bawling out people for putting out cigarettes in their damned plastic cups. They were washing out and reusing the damned cups. How could they carry on about a thing like that, the plastic cups? He had half a mind to give them twenty dollars to cover it and tell them to shut up, but he didn’t have twenty dollars.

  I said I did and would gladly do it for him, but then he was afraid to make them mad.

  “I know I should let it ride over me,” he was saying, shaking his head, “but goddamn it, it’s my first one-man show.”

  “Well, the stuff couldn’t look better,” I said again, “and I’d buy that big mother in the garden if it wouldn’t mean hiding it where nobody would ever see it in my backyard.”

  “Are you putting me on, Jeremy?”

  I’d never bought anything of his because we both knew it didn’t go with the Victorian gingerbread and the damask and the dolls and all the other trash in my house. (Stage set for a play!) But I felt so sick of that suddenly. I’d always wanted one of his pieces. And why the hell not put my money where my head was for once?

  “Yeah,” I said, “I want that one. I like that one. I could put it down in the grass out there behind the deck. I’d like to see the sun come up on it. It’s beautiful, that much I do know.”

  He studied me trying to figure if this was just talk. He said if I bought it and would lend it back to him with my name on it—courtesy of Jeremy Walker for future exhibits, he didn’t care if I put it in the bathroom. It would be a terrific thing.

  “Then it’s sold. Shall I tell them, or do you want to tell them?”

  “You tell them, Jeremy,” he said. He was smiling and stroking his beard even faster now, “but maybe you ought to think it over for a couple of days, you know, like maybe you’re not in your right mind right now.”

  “I’ve been doing some new work, Andy,” I said. “Some really wild new things.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well I caught Looking for Bettina, and you did it again there, Jeremy, you gave me a couple of real moments there—”

  “Forget that stuff, Andy. I’m not talking about that at all. Someday soon I want you to come over and see—” I stopped. Someday soon?

  I just drifted for a second. Yeah, that piece would look great out there in the garden.

  I caught a glimpse of Belinda far away from me, the pink sunglasses hiding her eyes now, and in her hand was an illegal glass of white wine. My Belinda. I spotted other friends, Sheila, a couple of writers I knew, my lawyer, Dan Franklin, in fast conversation in the corner with a pretty woman two inches taller than him.

  People were looking at Belinda. Babymouth, white wine, pink glasses.

  “Yeah?” Andy was waiting for me to finish. “What kind of new stuff, Jeremy?”

  “Later, Andy, later. Where’s the honcho? I want to buy that piece now.”

  [7]

  THERE was time to hit the Union Street boutiques afterwards. She didn’t want me to spend money, she kept protesting, but it was too much fun taking her into one fancy store after another, buying her all the things I wanted to see on her. Little pleated wool skirts, blazers, delicate cotton blouses. “Catholic school forever,” she teased me. But pretty soon she was having fun, too, forgetting to protest the high price tags.

  We drove on downtown and made Neiman Marcus and Saks. I bought her frilly dresses, pearls, the lovely froufrou stuff that the new female rock stars had made popular. But it was clear that she had a good eye, was used to good things, and thought nothing of the attentive saleswoman clucking over her.

  Slacks, bikinis, blouses, suede coats—all the interseason things you can wear year-round in San Francisco—went into the fancy boxes and garment bags.

  I even got her perfumes—Giorgio, Calandre, Chanel—sweet, innocent scents that I liked. And silver barrettes for her hair, and little extra things she might never have bothered with, like kid gloves and cashmere scarves and wool berets—finishing touches, you might say, that would make her look like one of those beautifully turned-out little girls in an English storybook.

  I even found a lovely princess-line coat with a l
ittle velvet collar. She could have been seven or seventeen in that. I made her buy a mink muff to go with it, although she told me I was crazy, she hadn’t carried a mug since she was five years old and that had been in the dead of winter in Stockholm.

  Finally we ended up at the Garden Court of the Palace Hotel for dinner. Service slow, food not great, but the decor absolutely lovely. I wanted to see her in that setting, against the mirrored French doors, the gilded columns, the old-world elegance. Besides, the Garden Court always makes me happy. Maybe it reminds me of New Orleans.

  It reminded her of Europe. She loved it. She looked tired now, last night finally catching up with her. But she was excited, too. She stole sips of my wine, but otherwise her table manners were exquisite. She held her fork in the left hand, Continental style. She asked for a fish knife—and used it, which I had never actually seen anyone do before. And she hardly noticed my noticing it.

  We talked easily about our lives. I told about my marriages, how Andrea, the teacher, had felt small on account of my career, and Celia, the free4ancer, was always traveling. Now and then they got together in New York, had a few drinks, and called me to tell me what a bastard I was. It was what Californians call family.

  She laughed at that. She was listening in that marvelously seductive way that young women can listen to men, and my realizing it didn’t make me feel any less important.

  “But did you really love either one of them?” she asked.

  “Sure, I loved them both. Still do in a way. And either marriage could have lasted forever if we hadn’t been modern Californians.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Divorce is de rigueur out here once the marriage is the least bit inconvenient. Psychiatrists and friends convince you that you’re crazy if you don’t split up for the smallest reasons.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Definitely. I’ve been watching the action out here for twenty-five years now. We’re all proudly enjoying our acquired lifestyles, and pay attention, the key word is acquire. We’re greedy and selfish, all of us.”