The Life Room (14 page)

After that night I was even more conscious of how I had become an object in one of his paintings that he wanted to pore over and turn into something of his own. It was seductive to be studied so closely. I thought I would learn something about the way that a man could love a woman by studying Adam’s obsession with me. I did not understand that love can also objectify. When I began modeling for Adam I was twenty-three, in my first year of grad school. He seemed fascinated with me in the same way Balthus was fascinated with prepubescent adolescent girls. Adam studied what I wore daily, when I came to model for him, as if to see what he might steal for his work, what might enhance his compositions. As a candidate for a doctorate of literature I understood that nearly every subject, every theme had been appropriated by writers. Love, betrayal, death, loss—it was all already explored, pummeled, dissected. It was the way in which each writer imbued his subject with his own personality and voice and originality that made a work of art singular. I suspected the same was true of painting. I had no idea how he saw me until he allowed me to look at the series he was working on. He worked on four or five canvases at once, and when he first exposed the work to me it was disconcerting to see my image distorted in those canvases. He saw me as innocent, as a young woman covering up her own sexual appeal. Was that who I was? Am I still that?

In the first canvas I was wearing a white blouse buttoned to the neck, the kind of blouse a schoolgirl would wear as part of her uniform. I often wore a pair of shoes that looked like black ballet slippers, and he had included those shoes in the painting, had intensified them by his use of brushwork and light so that the eye immediately fell to the shoes. It was as if the girl in the painting (me) was trapped in the wardrobe of an adolescent, and yet, unlike the girls in Balthus’s work, the girl in the painting was shapely. Underneath the painted white blouse you could see the shape of her breasts and their erect nipples. It unhinged me to look at the painting, at the woman who was
me
, and not me at all, and after we had slept together, I looked at Adam differently. I was looking to understand myself in his work. I was uptight, nervous, I trusted no one. I watched how he painted, saw the intensity and frustration he brought to his work, witnessed his patience and concentration. When he was frustrated he snapped at me and accused me of purposely trying to sabotage his work if I were fidgety or lacked concentration. He said that if I did not learn to sit still I wasn’t to come back, that he would find a new model to make famous.

It was from Adam that I learned that no matter what happened, what he had lost or suffered, it would eventually be translated into his work. To create, one had to live fearlessly. What does that mean? Have I been living fearlessly?

I thought of Adam as a person of great power and of myself as sensitive and intelligent, but was not yet certain what I would be able to achieve in my work. I admired Adam’s singular vision. He was going to paint no matter what the cost. It possessed him more than anything. Was I like that? Am I still?

I remember all this sitting under the beautiful Parisian sun, with the modern sculpture in the courtyard that looks like a jungle gym. Thinking about it, about Adam and my father, has freed me somehow. What if I had never come to Paris? Would I have remembered it all? Is memory a blessing or a curse?

At the Louvre yesterday I was enchanted by a painting by Correggio,
Venus, Satyr and Cupid
. Correggio bathes his bodies in a glowing light. The bodies are soft and sensual. He catches Venus in a state of pure abandonment, a symbol of carnal love. I remember looking at the painting with John, and my entire body blushed. The painting brought tears to my eyes. I put the postcard of the painting by my bedside, and it is the first thing I saw when I awoke.

It’s 7:00
A.M.
The light is just barely touching my window. Today I present the paper. I’m suddenly nervous. I’ve worked on it for months; the
Yale Review
has accepted it for publication. But when I think about the paper’s thesis, I’m unsure. By choosing Levin as the hero of the book, have I been too harsh on Anna and the passion she represents? Is it because I witnessed what my father’s leaving did to my mother? Because of how much both of us suffered? Is it because of my own past mistakes, when I could not control my own passions, that I sympathize with Levin’s moral view of love? I’m stricken with remorse, as if I’ve betrayed a dear relative, a friend, or a lover. Yes, Levin’s wholesome love for Kitty is wonderful. But have I discounted Anna’s depth of feeling?

I looked out the window. The breeze carried with it little tufts from the blooming linden trees. Their potent smell has overpowered all else. I showered, dressed, drank my coffee, and ate the croissant I had ordered up to the room, still filled with unease. Why?

I just got off the phone. I hadn’t expected a phone call so early. I assumed it was John or Robert or Julie asking if I wanted to walk over to the Sorbonne.

But I was wrong.

It was Stephen Mason. I’m stunned. I hadn’t really thought he would call. My palms are damp. “Eleanor, is that you? I didn’t want to miss you,” he said. His voice was thick and raspy. It has not changed.

I look at the small clock on the nightstand. Study the hands slowly ticking off the seconds. Time marches on. It is 8:00 o’clock in the morning.

“I can see your hotel from where I’m staying, Eleanor. It reminds me of when we were kids and I could see into your bedroom window.” Hearing his voice transported me to when we were kids.
I didn’t feel anything inside me when the playhouse burned. It tool: away all my feelings. Do you ever feel so much you think you can’t breathe?

Had I awoken a half hour earlier I would already have been out the door, on the way to the Sorbonne.

We agreed to meet tomorrow for a late lunch. Once I heard his voice it was impossible to say no. He said he’s in Paris writing a travel piece and that he planned to spend the day at the Louvre. I feel a peculiar mix of excitement and anticipation. Am I making a mistake by agreeing to see him? How strange to be in Paris at the same time. I’m sure it is the sheer coincidence of being so far from home in a foreign city that prompted Stephen to call after all these years. I tell myself that there is no harm in seeing an old friend from home. But I can’t help wonder why he wants to see me now and why I have accepted the invitation. Is it because I still want to know what came between us so many years ago?

I have to brace myself. I want the presentation to go well. I don’t want to think about anything else.

I want to record everything that happened today, though it is late and I’m tired and slightly intoxicated. It is as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. The paper went very well. Questions were asked, a heated debate ensued. Perhaps I had indeed read my own insecurities into the paper and that was why I had begun to doubt it. Apparently I am one of the only women not completely sympathetic to Anna. Helen Heifetz from Barnard defended me, saying that Anna was the embodiment of both good and evil but that Levin is ultimately the hero of the novel. He chooses the spiritual world over the carnal. Those who had disagreed seemed to be provoked by my presentation all the same. I’m still high from it all.

Not really thinking, I went to the window at the end of the hall and called Michael on my cell phone. It was 8:00 o’clock in the morning in New York. I knew he would be at the hospital doing morning rounds. He is usually cheerful in his doctor mode when I call him at work. You can hear the confidence and satisfaction he derives from his work, from the love and regard of his patients, in his voice. He asked me how it went. I told him that it went well. The audience seemed to love it. “Of course they did,” he said. I don’t know why I called him.

The comment seemed to dismiss the nervousness that I had expressed over presenting the paper and the days of toil that had gone into writing it, though I knew Michael wasn’t trying to be smug. I heard in his voice that he was glad it had gone well, glad that it was over. I knew he was anxious to finish up. We never did well over the phone. I asked him about the boys and particularly about Noah. “Noah’s fine,” Michael said. “He isn’t a baby anymore, Eleanor.” The comment stung.

Noah is sensitive. I worry about him. He’s particularly thin-skinned at school. There is a boy in his class named Joshua whom he worships. They had been inseparable for months, and then, out of the blue, Joshua stopped being friendly to Noah and began to hang out with another boy. Noah came home each day from school and gave me a report on it, on whether Joshua had played with him or not. The more Joshua ignored him, the more Noah longed for the boy’s attention. I told Noah that children are fickle. That the best thing he could do was to ignore it, but he was completely obsessed. Then one day he was flying a kite in the park and stopped to unwind the string. He looked up at me and said, “Love is like a string attaching one person to another. If you cut the string it will be gone. You’ll feel really bad.” I asked him if he was talking about Joshua. He looked up at me strangely. “Joshua didn’t cut the string,” he said. “I did. Look at how high my kite is flying.” He had found, completely on his own, a way of dealing with Joshua’s rejection.

“You’re still angry,” I said to Michael, because I did not want to let the hostility I heard in his voice go by unmentioned. I told him that it was important that I came to the conference. That I was halfway across the world and anxious about my children. Michael apologized for snapping at me and reassured me the boys were fine. “Has it been hard on you, that I’m gone?” I said, more gently. I heard the estrangement in his voice
(who are we when we are not together, Eleanor?)
, his need for me to detach from my own interests and make him the focus. In his wish that the paper was received well was also the wish that the paper did not matter, because my world at home beside him and the children should be paramount. And it did matter.

I was anxious to hang up. Even though a part of me understood Michael’s reaction, speaking to him had slightly punctured the high of the lecture. There was a lunch. We planned a trip to Notre Dame and a dinner that night.

My new friends in Paris are more able to appreciate what I have accomplished, which makes me feel, perhaps falsely, that we are close, though I know very little about any of them, only the details I have gleaned from the days we have spent together.

Did I call Michael because I subconsciously knew he would be edgy, that he would make me feel that by pursuing my own ambitions I’m somehow betraying him? Did I call him so that out of anger at him I might allow myself to feel less guilty?

Julie’s loud. I didn’t initially find myself at ease around her. I wonder whether we’d be friends if we had not been forced together in a foreign city, had she not known Jordan. She is the kind of woman who feels more comfortable, closer, with men. It makes sense that she and Jordan are friends. I don’t have the feeling that she has many close friendships with women. It has taken us a few days to warm up to each other. She and John knew each other in graduate school, and I feel slightly left out of their more intimate rapport. When we’d first met, both standing in line waiting for a cab, Julie took a paperback, some trashy novel from her bag, and began reading. I thought she was reading to avoid conversation, and it took me a few attempts at small talk to get her to warm up. I wonder if my controlled exterior (my hair coiled back in a twist) threatens her, the fact that I have children. My life must look conventional and safe to her. I need to show her that I’m vulnerable, to make her feel less threatened. Unmarried women in their late thirties and forties can feel bitter and defensive around women who are married, even if they claim to not want to be married or to want children, and I sense that defense in Julie. Of course, married women are a little jealous of the freedom of unmarried ones. I asked her whether Dan had made his choice among the young assistant professors, meaning, had he staked out his girl for that night, and she laughed her deep, throaty laugh. I had broken the ice.

The five of us get on well, I’m convinced, because we’re atypical academics. We bonded the first evening in Paris over a large table together at dinner. A discussion had ensued over a young scholar, Leo Swift, who had written a popular novel about Edith Wharton. Brenda Hedges called it rubbish. In the novel Swift adopted Wharton’s style and tone. Brenda called it “faux Wharton.” “My feeling is if you want to read Wharton, read Wharton,” she argued. Julie jumped in. Apparently she knew Leo Swift and argued that it was a worthy creative effort. She loved the novel, and called it brilliant. She thought it a tribute to Wharton. “All good literature does not get written in a vacuum,” she said, “Writers are constantly reinventing Chekov or Tolstoy or Dickens.” John jumped into the argument to defend Julie. He, too, had known Leo from graduate school and thought he was exceedingly bright.

I was interested in the discussion because I’ve thought of writing a novel, a modern version of
Anna Karenina
, but I’ve been too consumed with the children and my teaching. I’m tired of academic papers. I’m hoping by recording these thoughts in my notebook I’ll be more in touch with my vision and ideas for when I’m ready to write.

I told my new friends about the book I want to write and we talked about it at length, and I realized then that I had never articulated the desire to anyone, not even Michael, and just talking about the book made me feel as if I were acknowledging a lost part of myself. John rubbed his chin in contemplation. He confessed that he was a closet poet. He had written poems for years, ever since college. I looked at him differently once he said it and had a desire to read some of his work. I suddenly wanted to understand something about John I thought would only materialize in his poems. We talked about what fueled an artist. I expressed my theory (not a new one, I’m afraid) that it was childhood trauma and loss; the need to re-create a lost world. Robert wondered whether genius was inherited, biologically based, that surely all of us had experienced some kind of trauma and yet we were not all artists. Dan said he wanted to get drunk. That’s all he remembers wanting for as long as he can remember, and we laughed. “I went to graduate school for purely rebellious reasons,” he said. Otherwise, he’d be stuck working in his father’s law office. I brought up Elizabeth Bishop. Her father had died when she was eight or nine and then her mother had been institutionalized for mental illness. Julie reflected that Bishop’s work was cold, technically perfect but devoid of feeling. “But it’s repressed feeling. It’s the tension between her desire to disclose and not disclose that makes her poems emotional,” I said.