Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
Middle Age (10 page)
would never receive it. Dozens of canvases of various sizes leaned against the walls, festooned with cobwebs. Most of these were uncompleted, Adam hadn’t glanced at them in years yet he claimed to remember them all and intended to return to each of them, someday.
Had the man thought he’d live forever?
For months Adam had been working on a convoluted sculpture, his personal vision, he said, of the ancient nightmare Laocoön: the sea serpent that crushed a father and his sons in its coils, exacting a god’s terrible vengeance. Except in Adam’s American vision the human figures resembled slender elongated fish, poised as if swimming in a striated amber substance. This strange sculpture stood about six feet tall and measured about four feet in circumference at its base. How beautiful it was to Mariana, you could circle it and see undulating patterns of light through its partially transparent material; Adam had fashioned it from layers of plastic melted together and stained the hues of wood, straw, rushes. Standing before it now, Marina had the idea that the Laocoön was alive. She reached out to touch it and found it unexpectedly warm.
Why had Adam encouraged Marina to return to her long-abandoned art, and remained so indifferent to his own? Marina had known many talented artists in her earlier life, but no one less driven, less ambitious, than Adam. He was so without “ego,” you’d worry he might forget to breathe.
His “male ego” was of no more significance to him than a trailing shoelace.
Yet he’d thought himself vain. He’d thought himself ugly. He’d sketched himself as a Cro-Magnon male with a low, bony forehead. If a woman dared to suggest that she found him attractive, Adam laughingly dismissed the very possibility. You could not make him think what his inner logic refused to allow him to think. Once when Marina and some others, at a dinner party, chided Adam for not taking his talent more seriously, he’d told them that, in middle age, he took nothing seriously except Truth; he’d become far more interested in the moral life than in the aesthetic life.
But isn’t art a form of Truth?
No. Art is a cruel falsehood erected upon the corpse of Truth
.
This was a bit dictatorial for Adam Berendt, who usually spoke without emphasis. He’d laughed at his pretensions, attributing the remark to Spinoza; or, better yet, Walter Benjamin.
Marina was opening drawers and cupboards in Adam’s studio looking for—what? Behind her in the doorway stood Roger Cavanagh, sucking at his wounded mouth and watching her, uncertain what to do. Had Marina
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Troy actually screamed at him, or only just spoken harshly? As women in Salthill never spoke. At least, to men not their husbands or lovers.
This man would make her pay, Marina knew. If he could. She’d seen those reptile eyes beneath the puffy lids, fixed upon her.
Then, this happened.
Like a fevered scene in a film.
Until this moment of the headlong plunge of the past eighteen hours Marina would have described the film as somber, tragic; painful as if something were inside her guts twisting and churning. She would not have described the film as comic-grotesque. Yet somehow it happened that Marina opened the door to a cabinet near Adam’s work table, which she’d always assumed Adam had used for art supplies, and there she discovered a cache of personal items: hand-knit sweaters neatly folded, in stacks; cashmere mufflers; elegant silk neckties still in their boxes. There was a small black box from Cartier containing platinum gold cuff links engraved
A
.
B
.—a card enclosed,
Love to Adam on his mystery-birthday
,
Gussie
. (Augusta Cutler? Owen Cutler’s wife?) There was, attached to a bulky Aran wool sweater, a floppy black satin rose of the size of a woman’s fist, with a card inscribed in crimson ink n
Leila
. (But who was Leila?
Marina knew no Leila in Salthill.) Marina’s face flushed with blood.
These were Adam’s gifts-from-women-who-adored-him. And most of them looked as if they’d never been worn.
On a high shelf of the cabinet was a cardboard box, and this box, like her predecessor Pandora, Marina could not leave alone; though knowing (for how could she not know, her heart beating in fury and mortification, face burning as if she’d been soundly slapped on both cheeks) that it would be in her best interest to close the cabinet door with dignity, and retreat. But Marina tugged at the box, ignoring Roger Cavanagh who offered to take it down for her, and ingloriously the box toppled over, and its contents spilled on the floor: a cache now of cards, perfumed letters, and glossy photographs.
Even now, Marina might have retreated with a modicum of dignity.
Yet there she was kneeling amid these lurid scattered things, hair falling into her face. From a distance, she might have resembled a greedy penitent.
Adam’s women. So many? It should not have surprised Marina, yet it surprised Marina, for (she would understand this later, in a calmer time) she’d long refused to think of Adam’s life as it failed to touch upon her;
Middle Age: A Romance
she’d long refused to consider that, if he had not been her lover, he must have sought other women sexually, and even romantically; not for Adam Berendt the role of celibate, yet she’d wished to imagine him that way.
Now, here was evidence to refute her delusion. A packet of handwritten letters from—was it Camille Hoffmann, Lionel’s wife? These were dated over the past seven years and were signed
Love, Camille
. On pale blue sta-tionery, wispy as lingerie, a lengthy handwritten letter dated May of that year signed
Love, Abigail
. Marina’s friend Abigail Des Pres! Marina quickly looked away, not wanting to see even a fragment of what Abigail had written to Adam. There were many birthday cards, holiday cards,
Thank you
and
Thinking of you!
cards which Marina didn’t wish to examine. There were numerous postcards, and many of these were reproductions of works of art, for Adam’s women would have wished to indicate their good taste. In dread Marina turned over a card that looked familiar, a surreal landscape painting by the German Caspar David Frederich, to discover her own handwriting on the back, and
Love, Marina
. The card was dated two summers ago when she’d traveled in Europe. Wincing, Marina thrust the card away, not wanting Roger to see. But probably he’d seen.
Those eyes missed nothing! Marina would have ripped the card into pieces except it belonged to Adam’s estate.
Thinking
Of all utterances of the past none are so painful as those written
in the hope of winning another’s love
.
Snapshots of Adam with Salthill friends, and with strangers. So many smiling people! So much happiness! Marina snatched up to examine closely a luridly colored picture that resembled a publicity photo, a ruddy-faced Adam Berendt in sports clothes, with an unfamiliar moustache, in what might have been a casino; Adam was looking just slightly embarrassed, in that one-eye-squinting way of his, while a heavily made-up blonde in a red sequined dress leaned familiarly against him, resting her upper arm and part of her ample bosom against his shoulder. Adam looked like a winner. He might have been in his early forties, with still thick graying hair and a relatively unlined face. The glamorous blonde might have been a high-priced hooker. On the back of the photo was stamped
The Dunes, Vegas
.
Nov. ,
.
And what was
this?
Several soft-filtered photographs of a naked, fleshy woman reclining on a sofa in the pose of Manet’s Olympia; with alarmingly full roseate-nippled breasts and a swath of dark pubic hair; extravagant pearls around her neck, and an insolent-looking flat-faced white
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Persian cat at her feet. The woman wasn’t young, though still very attractive; like the Vegas hooker she was heavily made up, and rings glittered on her fingers; her smile was studied and lascivious. One of her plump hands rested on her round little belly. Marina felt a tinge of disgust, and dismay, for her sex; the female sex; how pathetic we are, offering ourselves like meat. Marina saw suddenly that this woman was—Augusta Cutler? She recognized the Persian cat.
“This is hateful.”
Adam Berendt, striding like a Cyclops among these ridiculous women.
Stooping to pick them up at will, devouring female flesh. Oh, and Marina Troy was among them! She began to slap and tear at the photos, cards, letters, gifts, as Roger, squatting beside her, tried to calm her. “Marina, no.
Don’t. You can’t know what any of this actually means.”
“I know! I’m not a fool.”
“Women liked Adam: you knew that. He was friends with both women and men, but women are inclined to write, and to be effusive. This will all remain confidential, of course.”
“Augusta Cutler! That woman has
grown children
.”
This was the true horror, worse than Adam’s suspicious finances: a low sexual comedy, where Marina in her grief had hoped to find pathos, pure cleansing emotion.
Roger may have thought this was funny, a comedy, or he may have been upset like Marina, startled and disoriented; it was difficult for Marina to interpret his behavior, except that it oppressed her, and her nostrils pinched at the cloying odor that wafted from his skin of cologne and male underarm sweat. She hated this man! This man who was a witness to her humiliation! He wouldn’t even let her claw at the evidence, he kept seizing her hands, restraining her gently, yet firmly too, as if she were a child, and he the child’s father, the male, supremely in control. Marina had begun to cry now, angrily. There was nothing of grief in these tears. She was flammable material, and Roger was a lighted match leaning dangerously close.
Marina said, “Leave me alone, God damn you! Don’t touch me. I hate you,” and Roger said, “You don’t hate me. That’s bullshit.” She felt his breath against her face. He was gripping her hands more tightly. Without transition they were struggling, in a grunting sort of silence. There was an air of the improbable and the fantastic about what was happening. A blazing light seemed to illuminate them, as on a stage, before an invisible audience. They were in Adam’s house, and where was Adam? Why were
Middle Age: A Romance
they in Adam’s studio, alone together? Why on their knees, on the floor?
There could be no explanation. The previous morning at this exact time, Marina could not have comprehended such an event.
I don’t even like Roger
Cavanagh. He dislikes me
. Yet Roger was kissing Marina, pressing his bared teeth against her mouth and neck; as if he wanted to hurt her, and Marina was in a mood to be hurt; overcome with longing for him, or for whoever he was; a man, a sexual being, in Adam’s place; in the exigency of the moment, stricken with desire like a violent thirst, she could not have recalled Roger’s name. Yet her hands groped over him. Her hands clutched at him.
There was the surprise of his hard-muscled back, his superior size and weight. She heard herself moan, in misery. In sexual longing. Was this, so suddenly, a love scene? Had the pathos yielded to frenetic comedy, and that in turn to a frenetic love scene?
It has been so long
.
I’ve forgotten how
.
What was happening was clumsy, harried, blind; she and the man blundered together like swimmers in a rough surf. Roger pulled at Marina’s clothing, nearly tearing it, and Marina’s dazed grasping fingers pulled at his shirt, and at his trousers, where he was guiding her hand. Marina had not remembered how quickly excited a man becomes, sexually aroused with a woman for the first time; the hot, accelerated breath like a dog’s panting; the strength of the arms, and the urgent thrusting body; between his legs, the wondrous thing-come-alive which Roger brought her hand to touch, to caress; even as he unzipped his trousers. They were kissing, groaning. They would have made love then on the floor, the hard hurting stained floor, the floor that smelled of clay, paint, turpentine and the ancient cellar beneath, except as Roger pushed apart Marina’s thighs, hoist-ing himself upon her like a flag, he must have had a glimpse of something in her face that alarmed him, her eyes squinting shut and lips drawn back in a grimace of anticipated pain, and the discomfort of her plaited hair crushed against the back of her head and against the floor, or maybe each heard their friend’s footfall approaching, Adam’s raised, amused voice
What the hell are you doing, Marina? Roger? I haven’t been dead twenty-four
hours yet, and you’re fucking in my house?
Almost at once, Roger’s erection faded; he muttered what sounded like “I can’t. I’m sorry.” Marina struck the man with both fists. She was wild, uncontrollable; she kicked at him, and raised her knee into his groin; afterward she would recall her frenzied behavior with deep shame; at the moment, she took a savage joy in it, clawing at the man, drawing blood on his face and beneath his ear. His face, contorted with alarm! She had to laugh. He grabbed at her wrists
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and held her still; he bit at her shoulder where her shirt had been torn away, and he bit at her breasts; he was panting, furious; his penis had gone limp as a deflated balloon, mashed against Marina’s crinkly red swath of pubic hair.
Abruptly then it was over. The madness had passed through them, and from them. A summer squall, blown into the air. They lay together on the floor of Adam Berendt’s studio, spared the need to look at each other, for a long time, exhausted and defeated.
O M W:
T C
T
hrough the walls ofthe stately old Colonial house,through hardwood
floors and layers of thick carpet, distended as if by Time, came the
sound of a woman sobbing
.
Her heart was broken, and not for him
.
O together on Old Mill Way north of the Village of Salthill-on-Hudson, in a meticulously restored eighteenth-century Colonial house on a hillside, a man and a woman of youthful middle age who’d been married so long (“Half our lifetimes at least”) they no longer saw each other, like moles in a burrow.
