The Great Man (12 page)

“Oscar was incapable of abstraction. He was too lazy.”

Ralph blinked.

“He wasn’t self-reflective or adventurous,” Maxine went on. Something had risen in her gorge, and she was talking as if she could expel it with words. “His paintings have no suffering in them, because Oscar never suffered. He had all the women he wanted, and still his wife and mistress doted on him. He neglected his children, but apparently they all loved him anyway. He was not nearly as smart as he thought he was; he had an inflated opinion of his own intellect, and he had no idea how limited he really was. You couldn’t argue with him—or rather, you couldn’t win an argument with him in the usual sense of exchanging views and having it out on equal footing—because whenever it reached the point beyond which his mind couldn’t go, he took that to mean that he had won.”

“What would Oscar say if he heard you saying all that?”

Maxine smiled acidly. “It would not surprise him at all. Anyway, I recall, not that I saw it once he was past a certain age, that he had a very small penis.”

Ralph was clearly shocked and had nothing to say to this.

“Well, he must have,” Maxine went on. “For all his charm and all his good looks, he always refused to put himself in any situation in which he wasn’t in control. He allowed nothing and no one to challenge him. He chose women who were devoted to him in spite of their superficial appearance of independence and strength. He never approached a woman he wasn’t totally sure he could have. And he never did anything in his work that risked revealing any aspect of his own inner self. He refused to risk anything—rejection, failure, self-exposure. And he didn’t allow himself to truly suffer, because he was too weak.”

“So you think he didn’t deserve acclaim and success?”

“Of course not,” she said. “He painted good portraits, interesting and sometimes even beautiful portraits.”

“Did your parents prefer his work to yours?”

“Our parents didn’t like art. They didn’t see the use of it. By ‘they,’ of course, I really mean our father, but our mother felt the same way—in the background, like a good wife. She was smarter than my father, by the way. We were both a disappointment to them. They were happy when we sold paintings, and happy they didn’t have to support us, but to them, we might as well have been retards. That should have made us more allied, but it didn’t. In the end, Oscar and I each hoped the other one would take up the slack. I felt much guiltier, being older, being the girl, and not being married. Oscar was very distant from them. He treated them with outward respect but didn’t take to heart a single word they said. I, on the other hand, was embroiled in all sorts of ugly tensions and battles with them, both spoken and tacit. I got the brunt of it; he got away. I suffered because it’s in my nature, and it wasn’t in his. He was lucky.”

“But you believe you’re the greater artist.”

Maxine waved the whole topic away. “Will it bother you if I smoke? I’m only asking to be polite. The only answer is no.”

“No,” he said.

She tapped a cigarette out of the pack she always kept in the breast pocket of her shirt. She flicked the lighter and inhaled a lungful of smoke, then put pack and lighter back into her pocket and returned her free hand to Frago’s ear. He licked her palm.

“What do you make of your rival, Henry Burke?” she asked Ralph abruptly with a leering glint of hostility.

“I have never met the man.”

“You two should go out for drinks, compare notes, divvy up the chores.”

Ralph said, poker-faced, “Maybe so.” He turned off the tape recorder, gathered his things together, and stood up. “I have taken up far too much of your time already,” he said. He raised his hand to Katerina, who was waving good-bye to him from the far corner, then went to the door and, without another word or look in Maxine’s direction, let himself out into the hallway.

After Ralph left, Maxine wandered around with an unsettled feeling, smoking. She felt trembly and nauseated, maybe from the heat and cigarettes, or maybe because she had been so angry while she’d been talking to Ralph, angry without really knowing it. Damn it, it was out of her control. It was getting worse with age, not better. She had meant to be gracious and generous, knowing Katerina was listening, but the interview had run away with her—or rather, from her. Something was very wrong with having so much unrealized ambition. It acted like some kind of poison, insidious and slow-acting. So much fuss and furor, so much bitterness, envy, sorrow, and regret, all over splotches of paint on canvases.

“Katerina,” she said harshly.

“What is it?” Katerina called. Of course she’d heard the entire conversation between Ralph and Maxine. She was worried about Maxine now, and expected to be lashed out at for something minor. She wouldn’t take it personally; she never did. She loved Maxine, and she understood her nature.

“I don’t feel well,” Maxine said. “I’m going to lie down.”

“Would you like some ice water?”

Maxine, ignoring the question, went into her bedroom, kicked off her shoes, and lay on her bed.

The thing Maxine had always most feared when she imagined dying was the moment following her last breath—lying there airless, empty-lunged, finished with inhaling forever: the emptiness after that last gasp, the whiteness, the freedom from need. That particular terror and literal breathlessness was what she had been trying to get into her painting this morning. She thought about the canvas as it now stood. Katerina was right: It was raw and bleak. If she added any more paint, it might tip the balance, and the painting might lose its sense of suspension in nothingness. She suspected, humbly and without ego, that it might be a very good painting. Maybe it was finished. She envisioned it on the walls of her closed eyelids with mounting internal excitement: It might be very, very good.

Katerina arrived in the doorway with a gentle clinking sound. “Ice water,” she said, and came over to set it down on Maxine’s nightstand.

“You heard the conversation,” said Maxine without opening her eyes.

“Yes,” said Katerina.

“I shouldn’t have said all that about Oscar.” Maxine spoke flatly, without overt regret.

“It was harsh,” said Katerina. “But everyone says things like that. It’s human. What’s done is done.”

“What’s done is absolutely fucking done,” Maxine repeated, smiling wryly, freed for now from the loop-de-loop of self-loathing. “And cannot be undone.”

“Claire St. Cloud called again,” Katerina said. “She’s going to bring her friend with her.”

“That bitch.”

“She sounded like a bitch.”

“She is a bitch. She was so controlling of my brother…. That little husband thief. Never could stand her. Needed a good slap. And he just ate it all up, while his poor wife stayed home alone with her
shwartze
maid and her books and her retarded son. Of course he’s
not
retarded. You know what I mean.”

“She’s coming at three,” said Katerina, smiling.

“Get out the needles and knives,” said Maxine with an answering smile in her voice. “Listen, I think that painting is done.”

“The one you’re working on?”

“It’s done.”

“Can I go and look at it?”

“You can have it.”

“To keep?”

“Or leave on the subway.”

Katerina sat next to Maxine and took her hand. Maxine had never given her a painting before. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“It only took me about an hour to paint the damn thing,” said Maxine. She willed her hand to lie inert in Katerina’s without clutching or squeezing or betraying any feeling.

“I’ll treasure it!” Katerina said.

Maxine turned her head on the pillow to find a cooler spot, happy to have Katerina hold her hand like that and react with such feeling to being given the painting.

“Now go away and let me sleep,” said Maxine. “I want to rest up for that horrible little mistress.”

Katerina went away, leaving the cold, dewy glass of water behind. Maxine opened her eyes and looked at it and realized that she was thirsty. It seemed to her that she’d never been so thirsty in her life. After she’d rested a little more, she would sit up and guzzle the whole thing.

Seven

The apartment Abigail and Oscar Feldman had shared until he died had been a wedding present from Abigail’s father, a furrier who’d died a multimillionaire and left everything equally divided among his three daughters, like a rational, nondemented Lear. He’d bought this place on Eighty-fourth and Riverside in 1958 as an investment, and then, when Abigail, his youngest and favorite daughter, had gotten married, he’d given it to her and her new husband. Oscar Feldman had been a choice Abigail’s father had approved grudgingly and only because of Isaac Feldman’s business acumen. Back then, everyone, meaning Oscar’s parents and Abigail’s and even Abigail herself, had assumed Oscar would give up his notions of being a painter and go into the meat business with his father. The fact that Abigail could have known her husband so little amazed her now. The idea of Oscar getting up before dawn to trundle down to the Meatpacking District was ridiculous. He had never shown any interest in business. He’d wisely married a rich Jewish girl, and had lived off her father’s money until his work started to sell, but even then, it was her father’s money that had sustained their daily lives. Oscar’s father hadn’t been rich, although he’d been successful, but he left his wholesale meat business to an enterprising nephew and not much to either of his children.

The apartment was big, hushed, and dim, so well-insulated that no noise filtered in, either from the city or from any of the neighboring apartments. It took up the rear half of the second floor of a nineteenth-century building; there was no view, but Riverside Park was just across the street, and Abigail’s synagogue was only a few blocks away. The apartment smelled clean but dense and shut-in, as if the windows were never opened. It was either an oasis or an entombment, depending on Abigail’s mood. Since Oscar and her maid, Maribelle, had died, she had been feeling a little restless. Whole days went by now of almost unbroken silence, Ethan rocking, his right hand holding his left ear, while Abigail read. She had reread most of Henry James recently, and was taking a break now from Great Literature with a few light, earnest, simple contemporary novels by women. Whenever she ran out of books, she went on-line and ordered more from
Amazon.com
. Because of the Internet, which she used to order not only books but also groceries and clothes and just about whatever else she and Ethan needed, she almost never had any real reason these days to leave the apartment; she took Ethan to Shabbat services most Friday nights but no longer bothered on Saturday mornings, and once or twice during the week she took him down to the park for some fresh air. Except for these excursions and an occasional visit with Maxine or her one surviving older sister, Rachel, who lived on Long Island, Abigail spent her days in the apartment with Ethan, completely alone except for the girl who came to clean the apartment and run small errands on Mondays and Ethan’s nurse, a soft-spoken young man named Marcus, who came every other day to bathe him and give him physical therapy.

She was therefore nervous and excited about Henry’s visit today. The first time he had come, about two weeks before, she hadn’t realized how oddly satisfying it would be to talk to him.

This morning, she’d made up her face and despaired at how fleshy and drooping it had become. She had never been much of a beauty, but she’d always had what Oscar had called “a beguiling softness” about her. He had always made her feel attractive—it was one of the many things she had dearly loved about him—but it had been a long time since she’d thought much about how she looked. The last time Henry had come, she had worn her usual comfortable elastic-waist pants and a white button-down shirt that had been Oscar’s. Today, she had put on a pale turquoise silk pantsuit, which by some miracle was a little loose on her now, her pearl necklace, and low-heeled pumps; yesterday, she had had her short faded red hair colored its original auburn and styled in a new way, springier, curlier.

She’d ordered in Oscar’s favorite delicatessen food from Zabar’s so Henry could experience firsthand the sort of lunch that Oscar had liked: smoked whitefish salad, potato salad, sliced chicken breast, and smoked Gouda, along with grainy mustard, sour dill pickles, and rye bread that was crusty outside and soft inside. It was easier than trying to make something from scratch. Abigail had never been much of a cook, but she knew good food when she ate it. Early in her and Oscar’s marriage, she had hired a West Indian woman, Maribelle, who had lived in the little maid’s room off the kitchen for more than forty years. She had been a great cook, which, naturally, had caused Abigail to get increasingly fatter as the years went on. Five years ago, Maribelle had died, very shortly after Oscar. Abigail had to admit, but only privately, to herself, that she missed her housekeeper more than she missed her husband. Maribelle had been her faithful and constant companion, and he had not.

One day, Oscar had asked Maribelle out of the blue to take all her clothes off and pose for him right then, in the living room, and she’d done it. He had never before painted at home; he worked in his studio on the Bowery and often stayed there several nights in a row, or so he said—of course, he was probably at Teddy’s. He’d covered all the furniture in drop cloths for a couple of days. Standing there unselfconsciously, Maribelle had started to sing while he painted, old torch songs, so he’d painted her as a nightclub singer, with her head thrown back, eyes half closed, mouth open in song. It had been festive, but Abigail couldn’t remember now why she had found it so exciting and entertaining to have her maid standing there singing naked in her living room while her husband wielded his paintbrush with his usual predatory jabs. What an odd life it had turned out to be, living in a cloister with a son who was totally imprisoned in his own mind and body, a husband who went wherever and fucked whomever he wanted, and a black maid as her best friend. Abigail had planned as a girl to get a graduate degree in literature, become a professor, never get married or have children. Anyway…

Should she have bought some wine? She would have bet anything Teddy had served him wine. She felt a flare-up of jealousy like a tongue of flame in a defunct oil field. Henry and Teddy had probably gotten tipsy together while they talked about Abigail’s husband. They had probably liked each other. Teddy had always been beautiful. Was she warm? Abigail had never had an impression of warmth from Teddy, but why would she have?

It was so odd, looking back at it all. This woman knew Abigail’s husband as well as Abigail did, but very differently; had given birth to Oscar’s twin daughters. Abigail and Oscar had never once talked directly about any of this, but of course Abigail knew everything. She wasn’t stupid. And of course she minded, but she and Oscar had always been more friends than lovers; she couldn’t meet his needs that way. She had always preferred to sleep alone. She was taken up with Ethan’s needs, because she refused to send him away to an institution, although everyone assured her it would be the best thing for everyone. He was her only child. Yes, she had always been horribly jealous of her husband’s mistress, but it was unfair of her to mind. Abigail’s main feeling about Teddy, besides this natural and uncontrollable jealousy, had been curiosity. She remembered seeing Teddy at Oscar’s openings, knowing who she was and knowing Teddy knew who she was, but both of them, naturally, pretending ignorance. At least they hadn’t had to stare at each other on gallery walls, because Oscar hadn’t painted any portraits of either of them, but they’d had to look together at other women he’d painted and, more often than not, slept with.

Whatever and whoever she was besides, Teddy had been the antithesis of Abigail for Oscar. That had been the whole point of her role in his life, as far as Abigail was concerned: an overflow valve to catch all of Oscar’s excess appetite and energy their marriage failed to absorb and feed. She could see no other reason for his dual life than the fundamental but entirely natural incompatibility with his wife that underlay their otherwise-good union; and so egotistically, and admitted only to Maribelle, Abigail had always viewed her husband’s need for his mistress as the waste product of their marriage. She hoped that nothing she might learn, either inadvertently or directly, in the course of this biography Henry was writing would contradict this necessary belief.

Abigail opened her apartment door as Henry came down the hallway. She let him in right away. “Let’s sit in the kitchen,” she said before he could apologize for being late. “I’ve got Oscar’s favorite lunch, and he always wanted to eat lunch in the kitchen. He said it was
haimish.
”

Henry followed her into the narrow, somewhat cramped kitchen, at the very end of which was a breakfast nook, whose table was set and laden with food.

“He spoke Yiddish, then,” he said.

“Well, but you have to understand, he spoke it ironically. He always made fun of American Jews of our generation who tried to sound
echt,
as he called it, again ironically.”

Abigail fluttered over to the fridge, aware of the three bottles of beer in there left over from a visit from Maxine months before. Maxine had brought a six-pack of Mexican beer and drunk two herself, while Abigail had sipped carefully at about one-eighth of one and poured the rest down the sink later.

“Would you like a beer?” Abigail asked Henry, trying to sound as if she said this every day.

“Sure,” he said with enthusiasm as he slid into the kitchen nook and sat next to Ethan, who was humming to himself in a tone so low, it was almost like Mongolian throat singing, and who seemed not to notice Henry’s presence at all. Henry got out his notebook and, there being not one inch on the table that wasn’t covered with food or dishes, tucked it under his thigh and put his pen behind his ear. He took a swig of the bottle of Tecate Abigail handed him.

Ethan stopped humming and rocking. Without looking directly at Henry, he sent a gentle, fluttering hand over to touch Henry’s shoulder.

“He’s saying hello,” said Abigail. “Help yourself to lunch; it’s from Zabar’s.”

“Do you keep kosher?” asked Henry.

“Well, I’m Conservative,” said Abigail, “so no, not strictly, but Itry.”

“Do you take care of this place all by yourself?” he asked her.

“Oh God no,” she said. “A girl cleans it once a week. I use the word
clean
very loosely. Since Maribelle died, it’s been a big problem. No one seems to know how to dust moldings or get behind couches. Maxine told me to hire a Filipina, but they all seem to be taken, or else I just don’t know how to find one.”

Henry took a daub of whitefish salad, a piece of cheese, a few lumps of potato salad, a piece of rye bread. “This looks great,” he said.

“He hated lox and cream cheese. And bagels. He said it was all too slippery. The texture of the bagels, slippery. Lox, slippery. Cream cheese, ditto. He called them ‘the Jewish Unholy Trinity.’”

Henry laughed. Abigail sat down, afraid she was babbling. She spooned whitefish salad onto some bread and took a big bite to shut herself up, then did the same with another piece of bread and put it onto Ethan’s plate. Ethan, without looking at it, immediately lifted it to his mouth, touched it to his lips, then set it down again.

Henry took another swig of beer. “I wonder,” he said through a gentle burp, “whether you remember those photo portraits of schoolgirls Oscar took in high school. I went out to Brooklyn College yesterday and found them, and at least half of them were of you, or someone who looked a lot like you.”

“That was me,” she said, startled. “That’s right, I’d forgotten about those things.”

“I didn’t realize you were high school sweethearts. I thought you met in college.”

“We weren’t,” said Abigail. “I barely knew him in high school. Frankly, I hardly remember him shooting me, but now that you mention it, he did come around me a lot with a camera. I thought he was very funny; I knew he was out of my league romantically, so I didn’t even bother playing coy with him. When he asked me on our first real date in college, when I was a freshman and he was a senior, I was very surprised, but of course I went, but even then I felt there weren’t many sparks between us, so I didn’t bother getting too worked up about it.”

“But he really liked you,” said Henry.

“He kissed me good night, sure, but to me it felt friendly and polite. We didn’t become, as they say, romantically involved until I was a junior and he was living in the Village…. In my mind, it happened by default, since we were hanging out together so much, so I tried not to expect anything from it. The girls were all crazy about him, and none of them took his thing with me seriously. They kept buzzing around even when I was there.”

“What did you and Oscar do on your dates?”

“We went and heard a lot of jazz, which I hated, and he thought it was the funniest thing, to hate jazz. One day, he asked if I would marry him. We were out at Coney Island, on the roller coaster, of all places. What a way to propose! I said I’d think about it, I was so surprised. Inside, I was just singing. I always thought we were mostly pals, and sleeping together was just something our crowd did back then—to be different from our parents, I guess. Well, we really were just pals, but we were great pals, and it turned out that’s the kind of wife he wanted.”

“I had the strong impression,” Henry said, “seeing those photographs, that he was in love with you even in high school. I could see it in how he kept the camera on you. And you were so—”

“If you say pretty, I’ll laugh,” she said.

“I was going to say ‘comfortable with yourself.’”

She shot him a shrewd look. “Oscar liked to say he married me because he knew he would always feel he could be fully himself with me. Not the most romantic reason, is it?”

“How long did it take?” Henry asked, writing doggedly in his notebook. “Before you accepted?”

“My sister Rachel said to me when I told her about it, ‘He’s a good man.’ Rachel is one year older than I am, a psychiatrist in Great Neck, or was—she’s retired now. Even back then she knew I didn’t have it in me to be a professor, which was what I always said I wanted to be. I always loved to read, but I didn’t do so great in college. I didn’t like to think that way about books; I just liked reading them. All that analysis gave me a headache. So Rachel told me to marry Oscar because she said I’d be much happier that way. I knew she was right; plus, I loved him like crazy. The next day, I told him the answer was yes. He seemed relieved, which shocked me…. He acted like he’d been really worried I’d say no. Ethan,” she said suddenly to her son, “let me do it for you.” She picked up his piece of bread and held it to his mouth. Ethan took a snapping bite and began to chew savagely, staring sideways at the ceiling.