“Oh, go,” said Patty. “Do go. I think you should. I mean, she’s old, Angelina.”
“I know.”
Patty was aware of how much Angelina wanted to talk about herself, and yet this didn’t disturb Patty, she merely noticed it. And she understood. Everyone, she understood, was mainly and mostly interested in themselves. Except Sibby had been interested in her, and she had been terribly interested in him. This was the skin that protected you from the world—this loving of another person you shared your life with.
A while later, well into her second glass of white wine, Patty told Angelina about Lila Lane, but she said only the Fatty Patty stuff, and how they all thought she was a virgin. And then she said, “You know, Lucy Barton wrote—”
“Oh, for the love of God,” said Angelina. “You’re as pretty as ever, Patty. Honest to God, to have to listen to that. No one calls you that, Patty.”
“They might.”
“I’ve never heard it, and I hear kids all day long. Patty, you can still meet a man. You’re lovely. You really are.”
“Charlie Macauley is the only man who interests me,” Patty said. This was the wine.
“He’s old, Patty! You know, he’s a mess.”
“In what way is he a mess?”
“I just mean he was in the Vietnam war years ago and he’s— You know, he’s got terrible PTSD.”
“He does?”
Angelina gave a tiny shrug. “I heard that. I don’t know who from. But years ago I heard it. I don’t know, really. His wife is— Well, you’ve got a chance, Patty.”
Patty laughed. “His wife always seemed nice.”
“Oh, come on, she’s an anxious old thing. I’m telling you, go for a spin with Charlie.”
And then Patty wished she hadn’t said anything.
But Angelina didn’t seem to notice. It was herself—and her husband—she wanted to talk about. “I asked him right out the other night on the phone, are you going to start divorce proceedings, and he said no, he didn’t want to do that. So I let it drop. I don’t know why he’d leave but not want a divorce. Oh, Patty!”
In the parking lot, Angelina put her arms around Patty and they hugged, squeezed each other tight, for a moment. “I love you,” Angelina called out as she got into her car, and Patty said, “Back at you.”
—
Patty drove carefully. The wine had made her feel things, although she was not supposed to drink with her antidepressants. But her mind felt large now, and through it went many things. She thought of Sebastian, and wondered if anyone knew what she had not known until he told her—the unspeakable things that had happened to him. She wondered now if it had showed. Something showed, certainly. She remembered how she’d heard in the clothing store one day, as she’d left with Sebastian, the young clerk saying to another clerk, “It’s like she has a dog.”
In Lucy Barton’s memoir, Lucy wrote how people were always looking to feel superior to someone else, and Patty thought this was true.
Tonight the moon was behind Patty, almost, and she saw it in the rearview mirror and winked at it. Her sister Linda came into her mind. Linda saying she didn’t know how Patty could work with adolescents. Patty, driving, shook her head; well, that’s because Linda never knew. No one except Sebastian ever knew. After Sibby’s death, Patty had gone to a therapist. She had planned on telling this woman. But the woman wore a navy blue blazer and sat behind a big desk, and she asked Patty how she felt about her parents’ divorce. Bad, Patty had said. Patty couldn’t figure out how to stop going to this therapist, until she lied and said she couldn’t afford it anymore.
Now, as Patty drove into her driveway and saw the lights she’d left on, she realized that Lucy Barton’s book had understood her. That was it—the book had understood her. There remained that sweetness of a yellow-colored candy in her mouth. Lucy Barton had her own shame; oh boy did she have her own shame. And she had risen right straight out of it. “Huh,” said Patty, as she turned the car engine off. She sat in the car for a few moments before she finally got out and went inside.
On Monday morning Patty left a note with the homeroom teacher asking Lila Lane to come to her office, but she was surprised nevertheless when the girl showed up the next period. “Lila,” said Patty. “Come in.”
The girl walked into Patty’s office, and Patty said, “Have a seat.” The girl looked at her warily, but she spoke right away and said, “I bet you want me to apologize.”
“No,” Patty said. “Nope. I asked you to come here today because the last time you were here I called you a piece of filth.”
The girl looked confused.
Patty said, “When you were in here last week, I called you a piece of filth.”
“You did?” the girl asked. She sat down slowly.
“I did.”
“I don’t remember.” The girl was not belligerent.
“After you asked why I had no children and said I was a virgin and called me Fatty Patty, I called you a piece of filth.”
The girl watched her with suspicion.
“You are not a piece of filth.” Patty waited, and the girl waited, and then Patty said, “When I was growing up in Hanston, my father was a manager of a feed corn farm and we had plenty of money. We were comfortable, you’d call it. We had enough money. I have no business calling you—calling anyone—a piece of filth.”
The girl shrugged. “I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Well, I guess you were angry.”
“Of course I was angry. You were really rude to me. But that did not give me the right to say what I said.”
The girl seemed tired; she had circles under her eyes. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said. “I wouldn’t think about it anymore if I were you.”
“Listen,” Patty said. “You have very good scores and excellent grades. You could go to school if you wanted to. Do you want to?”
The girl looked vaguely surprised. She shrugged. “I dunno.”
“My husband,” Patty said, “thought he was filth.”
The girl looked at her. After a moment she said, “He did?”
“He did. Because of things that had happened to him.”
The girl looked at Patty with large, sad-looking eyes. She finally let out a long sigh. “Oh boy,” she said. “Well. I’m sorry I said that shit about you. That stuff about you.”
Patty said, “You’re sixteen.”
“Fifteen.”
“You’re fifteen. I’m the adult, and I’m the one who did something wrong.”
Patty was startled to see that tears had begun to slip down the girl’s face, and the girl wiped them with her hand. “I’m just tired,” Lila said. “I’m just so tired.”
Patty got up and closed the door to her office. “Sweetie,” she said. “Listen to me, honey. I can do something for you. I can get you into a school. There will be money somewhere. Your grades are excellent, like I said. I was surprised to see your grades, and your scores are really high. My grades weren’t as good as yours are, and I went to school because my parents could afford to send me. But I can get you into a school, and you can go.”
The girl put her head down on her arms on Patty’s desk. Her shoulders shook. In a few minutes she said, looking up, her face wet, “I’m sorry. But when someone’s nice to me— Oh God, it just kills me.”
“That’s okay,” Patty said.
“No, it’s not.” The girl wept again, steadily and with noise. “Oh God,” she said, wiping at her face.
Patty handed her a tissue. “It’s okay. I’m telling you. It is all going to be okay.”
The sun was bright, washing over the steps of the post office as Patty walked up them that afternoon. In the post office was Charlie Macauley. “Hi, Patty,” he said, and nodded.
“Charlie Macauley,” she said. “I’m seeing you everywhere these days. How are you?”
“Surviving.” He was headed for the door.
She checked her mailbox, pulled from it the mail, and was aware tha
t he had left. But when she walked outside he was sitting on the steps, and to her surprise—only it was not that surprising—she sat down next to him. “Whoa,” she said, “I may not be able to get up again.” The step was cement, and she felt the chill of it through her pants, though the sun shone down.
Charlie shrugged. “So don’t. Let’s just sit.”
Later, for years to come, Patty would go over it in her mind, their sitting on the steps, how it seemed outside of time. Across the street was the hardware store, and beyond that was a blue house, the side of it lit with the afternoon sun. It was the tall white windmills that came to her mind. How their skinny long arms all turned, but never together, except for just once in a while two of them would be turning in unison, their arms poised at the same place in the sky.
Eventually Charlie said, “You doing okay these days, Patty?”
She said, “I am, I’m fine,” and turned to look at him. His eyes seemed to go back forever, they were that deep.
After a few moments Charlie said, “You’re a Midwestern girl, so you say things are fine. But they may not always be fine.”
She said nothing, watching him. She saw how right above his Adam’s apple he had forgotten to shave; a few white whiskers were there.
“You sure don’t have to tell me what’s not fine,” he said, looking straight ahead now, “and I’m sure not going to ask. I’m just here to say that sometimes”—and he turned his eyes back to hers, his eyes were pale blue, she noticed—“that sometimes things aren’t so fine, no siree bob. They aren’t always fine.”
Oh, she wanted to say, wanting to put her hand on his. Because it was himself he was speaking of, this came to her then. Oh, Charlie, she wanted to say. But she sat next to him quietly, and a car went by on Main Street, then another. “Lucy Barton wrote a memoir,” Patty finally said.
“Lucy Barton.” Charlie stared straight ahead, squinted. “The Barton kids, Jesus, that poor boy, the oldest kid.” He shook his head just slightly. “Jesus Christ. Poor kids. Jesus H. Christ.” He looked at Patty. “I suppose it’s a sad book?”
“It’s not. At least I didn’t think so.” Patty thought about this. She said, “It made me feel better, it made me feel much less alone.”
Charlie shook his head. “Oh no. No, we’re always alone.”
For quite a while they sat in companionable silence with the sun beating down on them. Then Patty said, “We’re not always alone.”
Charlie turned to look at her. He said nothing.
“Can I ask you?” Patty said. “Did people think my husband was strange?”
Charlie waited a moment, as though considering this. “Maybe. I’m the last person around here to know what people think. Sebastian seemed to me to be a good man. In pain. He was in pain.”
“Yuh. He was.” Patty nodded.
Charlie said, “I’m sorry about that.”
“I know you are.” The sun splashed brightly against the blue house.
After many moments had gone by, Charlie turned again to look at her. He opened his mouth as though about to say something, but then he shook his head and closed his mouth once more. Patty felt—without knowing what it was—that she understood what he was going to say.
She touched his arm just briefly, and in the sun they sat.
Cracked
When Linda Peterson-Cornell saw the woman who would be staying in their home for the week, she thought: Oh, this will be the one. The woman’s name was Yvonne Tuttle, and she had been brought to the house by another woman from the photography festival, Karen-Lucie Toth, who stood silently beside Yvonne as Linda welcomed her. Yvonne was very tall and had slightly wavy brown hair that went to her shoulders; her face had possibly been quite pretty ten years earlier. Now there were lines beneath the eyes that diminished their blue gaze, and also Yvonne wore too much makeup for someone who was clearly past forty—Linda was fifty-five. Yvonne’s sandals, with high cork wedges, made her even taller. They gave away to Linda the fact that Yvonne had, in her youth, most likely not come from much. Shoes always gave you away.
In the garden of Linda and Jay Peterson-Cornell’s house were two sculptures by Alexander Calder, both on one side of the large and bright blue swimming pool; inside the house on the walls of the living room were two Picassos and an Edward Hopper. There was also an early Philip Guston at the end of the sloping hallway that led to the guest area.
“Come,” Linda directed, and both the other women followed her down the hallway, which swerved around a corner then led through the long, glass-paneled walkway that finally opened into the guest suite. Linda nodded to the maid to indicate that she could leave, then Linda waited for Yvonne to say something. Yvonne just kept glancing around, gripping the handle of her wheelie suitcase, and said nothing about the house, which, even if you did not recognize the art on the walls—astonishing for a photographer not to recognize art—was still worth commenting on. The house had been renovated a few years earlier, and what the architect had done was inspired. The guestroom was all glass.
“Where’s the door?” Yvonne finally said.
“There is no door,” Linda said. She could have told Yvonne that there was no need to worry about privacy, as she and her husband stayed upstairs in the front of the house and the back garden had no houses overlooking it, but Linda did not say this. Instead she showed Yvonne the bathroom across the hall, which also had no door and was in the shape of a V and had no shower curtain or stall, the shower nozzle simply protruded from the wall. The floor was tilted to take the running water away.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Yvonne said, and Linda told her that everyone said that. Karen-Lucie Toth had continued to stand silently near Yvonne this whole time: She was the most famous of the photographers at the Summer Festival and the one who came back every year. Linda knew that Karen-Lucie had asked if Yvonne Tuttle could teach a class this summer, and the directors had agreed, although Yvonne’s portfolio was not as strong as the Festival usually required. But no one at the Festival wanted to lose Karen-Lucie: The students loved her, and her work was well-known, and also Karen-Lucie’s husband had thrown himself off the top of the Sheraton in Fort Lauderdale three years before. Karen-Lucie Toth got a pass on everything, including politeness, Linda thought, because when she said now to Karen-Lucie, “I don’t believe you’ve been inside this house before,” Karen-Lucie, also tall, also with brown hair—they could have been sisters, Linda observed—only said, in her extraordinarily thick Alabama accent, “I have not.”
After that, Yvonne and Karen-Lucie went away, and Linda, watching through the kitchen window as they walked down the road, saw them talking intently to each other and felt sure they were talking about her. Linda was jealous of Karen-Lucie Toth—she knew this, it was not a suppressed feeling—because Karen-Lucie was famous and childless and still pretty, and because she had no husband. Linda would have liked her own husband, whose intelligence had once impressed her so, to simply disappear.
The town hosting the photography festival was a small town about an hour outside of Chicago, with a library and a school and a church and a bright red hardware store that had a row of mason jars in its front window. There were also two cafés and three restaurants and one bar that at night often played live music. The houses near the center of town were large and old and well-kept, their porches cluttered this time of year with big pots of geraniums and petunias. The trees in town were tall oaks and black walnuts, and the boughs of honey locusts and chokecherries were pendulous, so that when there were no children playing in the park or in the schoolyard the trees could be heard with their own sound of whispers, and sometimes there was the tinkling sound of ash leaves too. A private high school that had gone bankrupt years earlier and eventually been forced to close was still available—parts of it—for the classrooms of the photography festival. In order to get to these buildings you needed to walk through pathways so thick with bushes and tree boughs that houses were only glimpsed as one passed by. It had almost a fairy-ta
le quality to it, the town. Yvonne Tuttle said this to Karen-Lucie Toth, and Karen-Lucie said she thought that too. They had just arrived at the building where a welcoming reception was being held.
Joy Gunterson, the director of the festival, had black ringlets and she was short and strikingly skinny. She thanked Yvonne for coming, saying that she was happy to include any friend of Karen-Lucie Toth’s. It seemed to Yvonne that Joy Gunterson’s eyes kept looking up toward the ceiling during this conversation, and after Joy walked away Yvonne told this to Karen-Lucie, who said “Oh, remind me” just as a woman walked up to them, dressed like someone from the sixties, with a pillbox hat, and a short coat, and a little pocketbook that matched her high heels; this woman threw her arms around Karen-Lucie, and Yvonne saw that the woman was a man. “I’m crazy about Karen-Lucie,” he told Yvonne, and Karen-Lucie puckered her lips and said, “Dollface, yew are just the sweetest little boyfriend I know.”
“You two look like sisters,” the man said. His shaved beard showed through his makeup, and his features were fine, almost perfect in their proportions.
“We are sisters,” Yvonne answered. “Ripped apart at birth.”
“Savagely,” Karen-Lucie added. “But we’re together now. Look at that sweet pocketbook on your darlin’ wrist.”
“What’s your name?” Yvonne asked.
“Tomasina. Here. At home, Tom.” He gave a graceful shrug, a subdued girlish bounce.
“Got it,” Yvonne said.
Linda did not comment as she got into bed next to her husband, and Jay did not comment either, although it was unusual these days for Linda to watch with him. On the laptop that Jay held against his knees they both gazed at Yvonne, who had arrived back at the house so late that neither of them had stayed in the living room waiting for her. Now she tossed her keys onto the bed, and her sigh could be heard through the audio. Yvonne put her hands to her hips and looked all around her. Then she went into the bathroom, where the cameras caught her staring so intently at the shower nozzle, which naturally gave the effect of Yvonne staring straight at them, that a shot of fear went through Linda, but Yvonne—surprising to Linda—chose not to shower and only used the toilet instead, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and came back into the guestroom, where she stood again, looking through the huge panes of glass that now showed the blackness of night. Finally she opened her small suitcase and undressed. Her body was more youthful-looking than Linda would have thought, but height could do that for you. Her breasts were still firm-appearing, and her thighs were—in the somewhat grainy light of the camera—smooth. She kept her underpants on and donned a pair of white pajamas that gave her the look, with her hair now in a low ponytail, of someone almost as young as their daughter. But of course she was not; she was a middle-aged woman a long way from her home in Arizona, and she reached for her cellphone and the ringing sounded quietly through the laptop on Jay’s knees.