The Misfortunes of Others (6 page)

“A wonderful nose?”

“Roman. I itched to draw it. Dark eyes, fair skin. Wonderfully good-looking. After years of dating trolls, it was such a relief to be able to go out in public again.”

“Trolls?”

“Oh, yes. Trolls.”

“And then?”

“We went out for over a year. Such a sad end to a beautiful time together. Of course, we never did get along. We fought like cats and dogs. He was just divorced, and I think he was still a bit in love with his ex-wife. I was the rebound person, you know, the one they use up and throw away, like Kleenex. Eventually, of course—and how could I not have seen it coming, I ask myself—he met somebody else and left me for her. She was better for him, he said. Much more compatible. Well, as I told him, the Monster of the Black Lagoon would have been more compatible with him than I was. I mean, we fought constantly. But I was heartbroken. I’m still not over it. I may never get over it.”

“A year is not exactly wasting your youth, Weeze.”

“It’s wasting a year of it.”

“Is this Harold why you moved out of Manhattan?”

“I don’t think so. Not entirely. I had had it with the city. So noisy, so dirty. People everywhere, the traffic, the car horns, the filth. It got unbearable, especially after Harold left.”

“Are there any eligible men in Ridgewood?”

“I told you, sweetie. There are no more eligible men anywhere. It’s a lost breed, a lost breed. The rest are all trolls. Deformed creatures from the bowels of the earth.”

“As a man, speaking for my kind, I must object.”

“It’s true, I’m telling you. I’ve given up hope. I’ll always be the bridesmaid, never the bride. Maya got the last good man.”

“Now I really must object.”

“It’s so depressing, Snooky. I’m going to have to turn inward and get into meditation and find inward peace, all that shit.” Weezy brooded over this. “I’ll be one of those old ladies in Zen centers with gray hair sticking out of their ears, chanting and swaying. You know what I’m saying.”

“Nothing wrong with Zen centers. I lived in one for a while.”

“There are no good men left.”

“I sense a theme to this conversation. How’s your work?”

“Well, I have to say at least that’s going well. I’m doing a show in the city a couple of months from now. It’s quiet here, it’s good for my work. I can hear the birds singing in the morning. I can go out on my deck at night and look at the moon. I’ve been painting like mad, except, of course, when I’m working on the nursery.”

“Maya tells me you’ve become famous.”

Weezy smiled smugly. “The article?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it was fun, I won’t deny that. My two seconds of fame. And it didn’t hurt my career one bit. Frankly, I think this
show in New York came out of it. The gallery owner said he had seen the article in the
Times
.”

“Maya also told me that you’ve been getting some strange phone calls. There are a lot of nuts out there, you know. She says she’s a little worried about you.”

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Of course.”

“Maya is my best friend in the whole wide world. But just between the two of us, she worries too much. I pick up the phone and there’s nobody on the other end, is that something to get flustered about? When I lived in Manhattan I risked my life just walking out on the street.”

“How often has it happened?”

“I don’t know. Four or five times, maybe.”

“Does the line sound dead, or is somebody there but not saying anything?”

Weezy chewed her lip. “Well, I must admit it sounds like somebody’s there. I say ‘hello’ a couple of times, and then I hang up. I figure if it’s important and I couldn’t hear them, they’ll call back.”

“But they never have.”

“No. Is that really a cause for alarm? Maybe there’s a faulty wire in the line or something.”

“That’s what I told Maya.”

“There, you see. Great minds.” Weezy glanced at her watch. “Oh, my God, I have to get going. I’m teaching these days, you know. I have a class of art students starting in half an hour.”

“That’s nice. You taught in Manhattan, too, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes. This class is culled from my best students in New York, so it’s fun. Well, at least it’s supposed to be. That’s the theory behind it, that it’s a wonderfully rewarding experience for all concerned. That’s what we’re all pretending is happening.” She grimaced slightly.

“It’s not wonderfully rewarding?”

“Well, they’re artists, you know, Snooky. Artists. Touchy, flighty, unpredictable. Difficult to work with. The truth is, I discovered long ago that I hate all artists except for myself.”

“So do I.”

“Thank you. We artists are the lowest form of life on earth.”

“That would make male artists the lowest of the low, I suppose.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I have one in my class who’s a doll. A living doll. Difficult as hell, of course, but still a doll. Maybe you’ll meet him, now that you’re in town for a while. How long are you planning to stick around for, anyway?”

“As long as possible. Maya needs me. Bernard seems to have no idea at all what he’s doing, taking care of her.”

“Mysterious how they function so well in your absence, isn’t it?” asked Weezy kindly.

“I don’t understand how anyone functions at all in my absence.”

“We limp by, Snooky. We limp by.”

“Will you invite me over sometime to sit on your deck and drink your liquor?”

“Maybe. It’s possible.”

“I like gazing at the moon, too, you know. I’m a moon-gazer at heart. We have so much in common, Weezy. I really think you should reconsider what I’ve said.”

Weezy patted him on the cheek. “Spend your time looking for your little chickadoo. And tell Maya I’ll give her a call later. Tell her I hope she feels better.”

Then she was gone, in a blaze of red chiffon.

“WHEN YOU said you were going to sit on my deck and drink my liquor, I didn’t fully realize how often you were going to sit here or how much you were going to drink,” Weezy said.

“Surely a few glasses of wine isn’t too much to ask?”

“Not of this wine, Snooky. It’s Chassagne-Montrachet. Thirty-five dollars a bottle.”

“I thought it was awfully good.”

“You shouldn’t have served it to him,” said Maya. “He can drink like a fish and never show it.”

“Drunk on life,” said Snooky. “Drunk on life. Can I have one more glass of that indescribably delicious wine before you take it away?”

Weezy relented. “Well … because it’s you.”

They were sitting on Weezy’s deck after dinner. The moon was in full view, hanging like a solemn eye in the night sky above them. It was early spring, and there was a chill breeze. Maya sat wrapped in several warm sweaters and scarves, a round bundle in her Adirondack chair. Snooky wore a blue scarf knotted loosely around his neck. Bernard, who never felt the cold, was in his shirt sleeves. He was sitting immobile, his head lolling back.

“I hate to say this, but I think your husband is asleep,” said Weezy.

“He is asleep.”

“He passed out as soon as he sat down,” observed Snooky.

“I’m not surprised,” said Weezy. “Did you see what he ate for dessert?”

“Did you see what he ate before that?”

“Cooking for him is like cooking for a large hotel full of people,” said Weezy. “Which I did once, in my renegade past.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. I was twenty-one and didn’t know any better. I thought I could handle it. I was wrong.”

“What happened?”

“My sous-chef and I ended up sending out to various restaurants in town for the meals people requested. The hotel manager, when he heard of this, was not delighted. Still, have you ever tried cooking for a hundred and fifty people at once? I was beside myself.”

“Well, you can certainly cook for four people. Four and a half, counting the baby,” said Snooky.

“Four and two-ninths,” said Maya.

Weezy had served them a whole fish split and baked with garlic, wine and herbs. She had thrown together a gigantic salad in an old wooden bowl, and dressed it with olive oil, lemon juice and more fresh herbs. There was a ceramic bowl (“I made it myself, in my pottery stage”) filled with small red potatoes covered with melted butter and dill, and for dessert, a creamy cheesecake with a graham cookie crust. “I think I’m going to die of happiness,” Snooky said when Weezy served the cheesecake.

“You are some cook,” he said now, swirling the wine in his glass.

“Thank you so much.”

“A cook and an artist. As I’ve said before, the perfect woman.”

Weezy looked at him wryly. “Tell Harold that.”

“Harold is obviously a fool.”

“Men are all fools, Snooky.”

“Not Bernard,” said Maya.

Weezy glanced over to where Bernard slumbered happily on his lounge chair. “No. Not Bernard. Bernard is a teddy bear. I envy you so much for finding him, Maya.”

“It wasn’t easy. I looked a long time too.”

“Not as long as me.”

“It’ll happen for you.”

“I doubt it.” Weezy looked up at the sky. “Still, I shouldn’t brood. It’s so boring for everybody. Look at that moon, how perfect it is. It looks like it’s smiling tonight.”

“How do you arrange not to have any insects?” asked Snooky.

“It’s March, sweetie. The mosquitoes aren’t out yet.”

“Oh.”

The sweet strains of a Mendelssohn symphony filtered out from the house. Weezy, upon arriving in Ridgewood, had gone straight to a real estate office, plunked herself down in front of a desk and said to the agent, “I want a house with light—plenty of light. That’s my only requirement. Oh, and high ceilings. Someplace where I can paint and grow my plants.”

Weezy’s plants consisted of approximately a hundred and thirty different specimens, creepers, hangers, blooming and non-blooming, annual and perennial, fuchsias and orchids, purple passion and spider plants, dracaenas and begonias, a profusion of greenery which had filled her Manhattan apartment. She cherished them like children. On moving day, the one time she had lost her temper was when her monstera plant had been dropped, several of the large leaves bruised and the pot broken.

“No!” she had sobbed to Maya. “No! Not the monstera!”

The realtor, as directed, had looked through her lists and shown Weezy only two houses. The first was too far out of town for her taste; she wanted to live close by and be able to walk to the stores. The second one she bought as soon as she laid eyes upon it. It was a sprawling ranch house with a greenhouse addition and a large wooden deck. She moved her plants into the greenhouse, where they settled down happily, basking in the unaccustomed light, and converted one of the bedrooms into a studio. She filled the house with an eclectic mixture of new and antique furniture, some of it outrageously expensive and some found broken on the street, and covered the walls with art—her own work and that of others. She had been there for almost a year and had yet to tire of it.

“Weezy found a wonderful house,” said Maya now, huddled in the depths of the chair.

“I was lucky about that. Are you cold, sweetie? Think of the child.”

“I’m fine. It’s beautiful out here.”

“Once Snooky is finished draining my wine cabinet dry, and Bernard wakes up from his little nap, would you like to see my newest show? It’s all new work, I don’t think you’ve seen it yet.”

“Love to.” Maya smiled comfortably at her friend. Weezy’s paintings were like her, flashes of temperament bathed in light. They were mostly abstracts which teased the eye with movement and bold color. Occasionally she painted from life, such as a seashore scene which had caught her interest, catching the waves about to spill with froth and the children at play in the sand. Since she had moved to Ridgewood, she had been trying her hand at still lifes of fruit and vegetables in a bowl or suspended in space.

“I’m finished now,” said Snooky, putting down his glass.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to hurry you.”

“Delicious meal, Weezy. Soup to nuts.”

“Have you gotten in enough moon-gazing for this evening?”

Snooky tilted back his head to see the moon, winking at him as gray clouds moved across its face. “I think so. I feel satisfied.”

“Should we wake up Bernard?”

“No,” said Maya. “Let him sleep. He could use the rest.”

“Come with me, then.”

They followed her through the house into the studio, a large room with a slanted ceiling in which she had installed two skylights. The room was scrupulously neat; the one time Weezy was compulsive about cleanliness was in her work. Her paints were stored in cabinets and canvases were stacked tidily against the walls. Weezy turned on the track lighting overhead and switched on a few lamps around the room.

“Here we go,” she said, taking out the canvases and displaying them. “What do you think, Maya? Different, isn’t it?”

Maya studied them in silence. The paintings were abstract, glowing with soft shades of pink, blue and violet. Small ink-drawn shapes danced in and out of the edges of the canvas.

“You must be getting over Harold,” Maya said at last. “These are spectacular, Weezy. So much softer than before.”

Weezy nodded, studying her work. “I suppose so. I must be feeling a little bit better. Everything I painted after Harold left me was red,” she explained to Snooky. “Bright red. Red on red. Purple on red. The color of inchoate rage.”