Chapter Two

look ghastly, Agnes thought, frowning at herself in the bedroom mirror. The black mourning dress that she'd thought was so elegant when she bought it for the funeral a month ago seemed unrelievedly drab. Her freckles stood out above the high neck like pox and her kinky hair made her look like Topsy. "Everything about your face is too large," her mother used to say, "especially your nose. Why couldn't you have been beau-tiful like your sisters?" Since she hadn't been, she'd tried very hard to be good. But it hadn't worked. Being polite and obe-dient hadn't gotten her the love she wanted. Or praying either. Now she felt tired of trying. Maybe being wicked would be better, she thought angrily, sucking in her cheeks, at least maybe I'd feel something.

She remembered how alive she'd felt when she'd thrown the Christian Science prayer book out the window the day Eugene died. His eyes were barely closed when she'd been seized by a fit of rage, opened the window so hard the sash broke and hurled it right into those bushes there. The rabbi would have gloated to see her. God, how she disliked being Jewish. It was almost as bad as being an ill-favored woman. Maybe if Eugene hadn't insisted on calling in Rabbi Citron that last week, her prayers would have worked. Maybe it was bad animal magnetism. She peered out the window into the bushes looking for a glint of gold lettering. But the bushes were dense and full of prickles and she couldn't see anything. Strangely relieved, she turned away from the window and began to walk briskly around the house, checking to make sure that every-thing was packed for their move to the cottage.

Two days before the movers were coming, Agnes was still looking methodically through Eugene's desk drawers for something that could make sense of the clock moving forward when he wasn't there. She hoped that somewhere in the drawers there would be a message for her. She secretly hoped for a letter -a sort of codicil to the will that was so cold and formal- that would tell her what he liked about her -besides her hair; she knew he loved that- so she'd know better what to like about herself. Or give her instructions. She would have liked it if they were very practical. Crochet a blanket with four colors of velvet and put it at the foot of our bed. Brush my suits. Engrave my headstone with a verse from Shakespeare or "He was a scholar and a gentleman." She considered going to a medium to ask what Eugene wanted her to do with all this time that was left her.

She took out some things from a lower drawer-his pen, his pipe, an hourglass, his opera glasses, a French dictionary; a German dictionary; a verse he'd translated from Horace, a bullet from the war, his moustache cup, a novel. The objects seemed so incomplete, she couldn't understand how they could be there, pretending to be real when he wasn't there to use them.

She took the moustache cup -blue Egyptian glass- in her hand and tried to meditate on it, was bored, was horrified at her boredom, tried again, promised him in her thoughts to be faithful forever; got flustered, looked into a cubby-hole and found what she knew all along was there -a photo of Lara's nursemaid with a lock of her blond hair- and burst out crying.

What she was really looking for, though she didn't know it, was a reason not to stay in mourning for the rest of her life. She really wanted something to slice into her like a surgeon's blade. Cut off the part of her that belonged to her husband and put it aside so she could go on. Like an operation, this was painful. The photo and the lock of hair hurt her physically. Betrayal hurt worse than giving birth. But the fact that he betrayed her-and she guessed that betrayal was constant-didn't mean she didn't have to mourn. She mourned doubly hard. She wanted him back and she wanted back the part of him that wasn't hers.

She held the lock of hair between her first and second fingers making it move back and forth like a snake-it was electric and lithe-and remembered the laugh.

When she first heard him laughing like that she had thought it was someone else. But he had been talking just a minute before to Lara's young nursemaid, Marie. Agnes had heard the familiar murmur of his voice and then suddenly that laugh. It was a sound deep down in his throat, a sort of animal sound, fill' of a mindless energy She had wanted to hear it again. She had wondered what could be so funny to make him bray like that. She'd have to ask him, she'd thought, threading a red velvet yarn through her crochet needle, but when she'd finally gotten up the courage to ask, he'd been annoyed. Angry even. When he was angry he forgot to talk like a Northerner and drew out his syllables into a soft Southern drawl.

"Laugh?" he'd repeated, pulling on his moustache. "You want to know what I was laughing about with Marie? Can't a man laugh in his own house?"

The night of his birthday came back to her. How she'd reached out for him and felt only cold emptiness on his side of the bed. How she'd gone down to look for him in the kitchen-thinking he was eating a second helping of the birthday cake she had made him, the one with his favorite frosting of raspberry jam and marzipan-and then she'd heard him in Marie's room laughing with her and feeding Lara. That still infuriated her. Debauching a child that way She had a vivid image of Lara perched on Marie's lap eating cake from her father's hand, her face flushed and avid.

Agnes thought of confronting him, but what could she say? Eugene laughing or eating cake with the maid was supposed to be invisible. Those were the unspoken rules. It was only when she found the girl crying in her room in her slip, her stomach clearly swollen, that Agnes had been able to do something.

"I'm sorry, Marie," she said, conscious that she looked con-tained, regal, with not a hair out of place. You'll have to go. I can't have you around the child in this state." The girl cried harder but Agnes was firm. She wanted her out by morning. Before Lara woke up.

"She'll think I deserted her," Marie wailed.

"You should have thought of that before sleeping with Mr. Kamener," Agnes spit at her. "Now get out." Her vehemence surprised her. She had meant to be gracious and icy cold.

Marie, still crying, began jumbling her things into an old grip, pulling them off hangers, stuffing them in any which way.

Agnes remembered with satisfaction that her cornflower eyes had turned an ugly red. Her nose was running and she wiped it with the back of her hand. Why she's only a child, she had thought, surprised. A child with a snotty nose. What is the point of terrorizing her? It isn't all her fault is it? Isn't it partly his?

That's when she got the idea of asking Marie how she had made Eugene laugh. Marie had looked at her bewildered. "1 said, how? 'Tell me what you did." She took hold of the girl's shoulder, caressed it, told her not to be frightened. The skin was very soft. The shoulder was soft. She could see the flesh between her fingers as she pressed, and further down the soft rounds of the girl's breasts. Her own breasts felt dark and con-strained under her corset.

"What was so funny about your butterfly pin, for instance? Why did he laugh when he saw you wearing it?"

"My pin?" Marie unconsciously fingered the spot between her breasts where she'd pinned it. "1 don't remember. Maybe he thought butterflies belonged in gardens, not...." She hesitated.

Agnes put her face so close to the girl that she could smell her breath. "If you tell me, I'll let you talk to Lara before you go."

The girl had touched the spot between her breasts again and glanced down, sniffing and, yes, smiling. It was hard to believe that in such a condition-thrown out of her job, with a bastard child to take care of- he could actually be smiling. Fo1lowing her glance, Agnes noticed the ruddy color of her nipples. They showed through the thin fabric of her slip, a frank deep red.

She'd suddenly understood the breasts, the nipples, the roses, the butterfly -it was a revelation of another world where men and women play with each other like children.

The evening after she found the photograph, Agnes was in her bedroom taking Eugene's blue suit out of the closet. She held the suit in her arms so that the wool brushed against her body under her light silk robe. The suit was heavy and holding it meant she had to exert some energy. For the few minutes that she was doing it, she felt fully alive. She put the pants in the press, draped the suit jacket over the rounded shoulder of the mahogany valet and brushed it vigorously with a clothes brush, starting from the top of the sleeve and going down to the cuff. Then she brushed the front. Before she found the photograph she would have been thinking, this lay over his heart, I am brushing the cloth that covered his heart, or his arm, or his wrist, or his thigh. And she would have cried a little. She'd done this every day since he died, brushed his clothes, inspecting them for buttons off, for tears, giving them to the maid to be mended. It made her feel connected to him. Made her feel she was doing him a service that somehow he would appreciate.

Her nerves still felt connected to him.

When the wind made the shutters of the farmhouse creak, she thought she heard him coughing in his room. When the maid let something drop upstairs, she thought he was banging on his nightstand calling for his medicine. The thought wasn't unpleasant, it kept her in the warm cocoon of his presence. But after she had seen the lock of hair and sat twisting it in her fingers, it was laughable. It was insincere. He was no longer alive in his pipe or his suit. They were simply dead pieces of wool or wood. And for her to keep on tending them as though they were his outer skin no longer made sense. She realized with a stabbing pain to her head that she wasn't going to take the clothes with her to the cottage on Friday. She was going to put them in boxes and give them to the poor.

But something made her keep on even though she guessed this was the last time she was going to do this. She finished the jacket and turned to his trousers, brushing harder than she had to. The brush was soft and the pressure she was exerting on the cloth felt good to her. Her hair; unbrushed, tumbled across her face. Her silk robe came undone and she tied it up carelessly. I am becoming a slattern, she thought, relishing the ugliness of the word. He's been dead only a month and here I am spending all day in my robe. Not caring what I look like.

She saw her daughter go by the door of her room dressed in a light, bright dress that despite her slenderness swelled slightly over her hips, and felt unaccountably angry But I do care, she thought, I do. I want to put on my gayest dress and go dancing. Instead, she brushed the other leg of his suit. There was a small stain on the thigh. Wine he had spilled during a quarrel -she had wanted to go with him on his trip to Paris. She could have shopped, strolled by the Seine. She couldn't understand why he wouldn't let her. Or on any of the other trips either. She hadn't understood when she married him that practicing international law meant you were always on the other side of the Atlantic sending your wife letters from the best hotels. She thought of the embossed stationery engraved with pictures of what she was missing: the Grand Hotel de l'Arc Romain, the Grand Hotel de l'Athenee. She turned the leg so the stain didn't show and kept brushing.

Agnes wondered if this was how the nursemaid felt, always at the service of others, always scrubbing faces and necks and hands that weren't hers. Tying up shoes, tying sashes, tying hair bows. She raised her arm to take the jacket off the valet and felt her small breast lift against the silk of her robe. The nipple contracted as the silk rubbed it. I look like a girl, she thought, catching sight of her flushed face in the dresser mirror. She wondered if Eugene had come on Marie when she had her arm lifted and her breast pushed out against her starched uniform. Was she standing on a stool, reaching for something on the top shelf of Lara's closet, her legs showing? And did she jump and say, "Oh Mr. K, you startled me." And then did he say, in his most gallant tone, "Marie, you're not tall enough to reach that, you're such a little thing. Here, let me help you." And then when he tried to help, did Lara's straw hats come spinning, tumbling down covered with ribbons? And did Marie say, "Fine help you are, Sir," and clap her hand over her mouth pretending to be frightened because she'd been so bold? And then did he laugh?

I'm going mad, Agnes thought, and she did look strange to herself in the mirror with her red face and tumbled hair and her not perfectly clean robe showing her white neck. Even my room disapproves, she thought. The ornaments looked crookedly at her. The gold cupids and china dogs, even the brocade chairs seemed to draw themselves up more stiffly Well she wouldn't have to see them reproaching her for long. Most of them wouldn't fit into her bedroom in the cottage. She had to put them into storage. The moving man was coming day after tomorrow. They would be piled up under clothes in the dark. She laughed and then sobbed. Lara heard her and looked into the room.

"Are you all right? Can I help?" she asked.

"Help me cry?" Agnes laughed again as her daughter came into the room. Yes, cry, please. You can do all the crying if you like. All of it. I won't keep any of it." And then she fell on the bed and began to cry in earnest. Crying when she wanted to scream in rage. Keeping her face turned away.

Lara patted her back, then rubbed in a rhythmical, soothing motion, circles, round and round. The crying got softer. Lara rubbed more vigorously.

Agnes sobbed a word into the pillow.

"What? I can't hear you.

"1t hurts. Need.

"Need what?"

"Oil."

"Oh, you want me to massage you the way they do at the spa? With that special oil you use after the bath?"

"Mm," Agnes murmured, not wanting to look at her daughter, just wanting the hands to keep on moving, to get softer and smoother and glide over her skin. While Lara went to get the oil from the bathroom, Agnes loosened her robe.

"If I could only relax enough to sleep," she said when Lara came back.

Agnes rolled over on her stomach languorously and let her gown off her shoulders. As she turned, Lara caught a glimpse of her mother's breasts. She had never seen her mother naked and was surprised at how firm her breasts were. Small and nicely shaped, like her own. And the same tiny waist too. Her mother extended her arms. Lara sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed -her feet didn't touch the floor.

"1can't seem to find a way to sit without bumping your arm."

Her mother sighed and put the arm across Lara's knees.

"Is that too heavy?" "No," Lara said. She wished her father were here. She poured some of the thick oil into her palm and smoothed it on her mother's upper arm.

See how loose it is underneath," her mother said, holding it up, "how it waggles."

"1t's not so bad," Lara replied brightly. "If you'd exercise regularly you'd see it would tighten. If you like, I'll show you how." She determined to exercise every day herself to keep her flesh firm. She moved down her mother's arm to the wrist, held her hand for a minute then started gently to massage it, her thumb making deep circles on the palm, with its mysterious lines. She pulled off her mother's rings, massaging the red circles they left, and stretching out the beautiful long fingers. When she finished, she poured more oil onto her mother's shoulders, leaning over working her fingers into the hollows. She could feel knots of muscle everywhere. The biggest one was farthest away from her right above the collarbone. She reached across Agnes's back and tentatively pushed her thumb into the skin.

The woman at the spa sat over me, straddled me;" Agnes said.

“My dress is too tight."

“You can take it off."

"Take it off;" Lara echoed. There was something about the tone of her mother's voice that bothered her.

'You'll only get oil on it and ruin it." Her mother turned her head on the side and watched while Lara pulled her dress over her head and hung it over the scrolled chair 'That's right," Agnes said

Lara climbed up on the bed and squatted over her mother holding her weight off her back.

"You can sit down, Lara. You won't hurt me. And really push hard." Lara dug her thumb into the tightness.

Her mother grunted. Lara pushed and prodded, listening to the slight cracking sound.

"1t hurts, but it’s good." her mother said. "Don't stop."

Agnes felt the warmth and heaviness of Lara's thighs on her back and began to relax. It had been so long since anyone had touched her or soothed her. Eugene had been sick for years. Not that what he used to do was exactly pleasant, but afterwards she got to lie in his arms and he would rock her like a baby. She felt the faint trickle of oil between her shoulders and shuddered. Her skin was coming alive. It felt supple. Lara's hands made her vividly aware of her shoulders and back. As Lara stroked her with the oil, Agnes felt her shape swell and narrow as though she herself were molding a body out of warm clay.

The rhythmic motion of Lara's hands slackened. Twisting her neck, Agnes saw her staring at the gold enameled clock on the mantel. She wondered if Lara was planning to go out tonight and felt a surge of irritation. Why did she have to be distracted just now? Couldn't she pay attention for just an hour? Was that so much to ask? Couldn't she see how much pleasure she was giving? She thought of asking Lara to spend the night with her.

"Tell me about your young men," she said instead. "You haven't talked about anyone for awhile."

"That's because there isn't anyone."

"How about that Mortimer? The philosopher. The bony one." She giggled coquettishly.

Lara climbed carefully off her mother's back and knelt next to her putting the top on the oil. "We broke up last year, Mother before Daddy went on the new medicine. You know that. We're just friends." That wasn't quite true on Mortimer's side, but it was all Lara felt like telling.

"You don't have any trouble attracting beaux. You should give your brother lessons."

"If Johnnie wants lessons, Mother he'll ask."

"Ohhh," Agnes moaned, "my leg got a cramp. Here, oh." She curled around and rubbed her calf "Oh, it's bad."

Lara sighed. "Let me do it," she said, pushing her mother's hands away and taking the leg firmly in both hands. It was obvious she wasn't going to make the concert. "Better?"

"It's moving up." She paused. "You and Johnnie used to be so close. What happened?"

Lara pressed hard right below her mother's knee. "Here?"

"Up more." Agnes touched her thigh vaguely. "He used to say you were prettier than anyone."

"And you used to say he doted on me too much. That he'd never marry as long as I was single-as though it's my fault he's a misfit."

"You know I don't like name-calling," Agnes said. "I never allowed it when you were little. Could you use a little oil, sweetheart? I don't want my skin to get sore."

Lara poured some oil on the back of her mother's thigh and started to massage it. Her fingers sunk into the soft flesh. It was like kneading a sponge. A big soft white sponge.

Agnes wriggled with pleasure. "Mm. Thank you. That's lovely. The man that gets you will be lucky I only hope when you find someone new he won't wear spectacles. You don't want to marry someone with a deformity"

"Mother glasses aren't a deformity" Lara punched her mother's thigh with her knuckles.

"Not so hard. Yes, like that. I still can't believe you kept him waiting outside in a cab while you kissed his friend."

Lara stated on the other leg, pinching and squeezing. "Mother stop. That's over. It's past. There's no point talking about it There's no fiancé. There's just you and me -and sometimes Johnnie."

"And next week we'll all be crammed together in the guest house," Agnes said unhappily. "I hate the idea of it. Only three bedrooms. One bathroom for all of us. I don't know what was in Eugene's mind."

"Oh Mother, if you'd think of it as a cottage—something picturesque out of Meredith- you'd like it better."

"I’ll be horribly cramped," Agnes said, putting her forehead against the pillow and speaking in a muffled voice.

"We don't really need all this space. Three floors, front parlor, back parlor, dressing rooms big enough to sleep in. We were rattling around in it."

"1wasn't rattling. I liked walking from room to room, each one with its different mood. I liked having a sewing room and a room for music. It felt gracious... and it makes me feel aw~il to send all the servants away except Catherine and my little maid."

"People don't have hordes of servants these days. And with fewer things around, there will be less to take care of. It won't be so bad, you'll see. On the days that I go to the Art Students League, you'll have the whole place to yourself. I may even spend the night at my new studio."

Agnes sat up abruptly. The embroidered flowers on the sheet had imprinted parts of themselves on her breasts. She wants to leave me here alone, she thought. The little bitch. I might have known there was a man in it somewhere. "It's your teacher, isn't it? The one with red hair. That Englishman or whatever he is. I suppose you've set your cap for him now."

Lara looked angrily at her mother. "’ve been painting seriously for years. Do you have to turn everything into a sexual adventure?" She felt like slapping her mother's dry cheek. "Besides, he's boring. Just repeats the same tired comments. I need to find someone else."

"Don't be fresh. You talk about your adventures incessantly."

"1only tell you things because you ask, you ask, do you know how much you ask? “Did he kiss you, does he love you, what did he say?” Why do you ask me those things? Every time I go out you're waiting up for me wanting to know."

"I want to protect you, that's all."

“You don't, you want my life for yourself." Lara went pale, Agnes red. "You want to have a man."

"Stop," Agnes begged.

'You do. You envy me my freedom. You hate me.”

Agnes covered her eyes. "1 don't hate you," she moaned."1 hate being old, I hate being fat. I hate being.... finished." She tugged on the loose skin under her jaw and started to cry.

"Don't cry, please...."

"How could you?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know, but p1ease don't." She kissed her mother's wet cheek. "You're beautiful. You can get a haircut, we'll be like sisters with our hair marcelled. We could even go on double dates."

Her mother gave a feeble laugh-she liked it, she liked the idea of going out with her daughter.

“Did he make you happy? Were you happy?" Lara asked her later when they were lying in the big room in the dark.

Her mother didn't answer; but let Lara stroke her hair; nestling her head on her shoulder. It still amazed Lara how easily her mother could pull her back by some simple act of childlike trust. Just an hour before, Lara had been frantic to get away but now, with the curly head pressing against her shoulder, she was overwhelmed by the same urge to protect and possess that she'd felt as a child.

"1used to listen outside your door;" Lara whispered to her. "I heard him making love to you. I thought he didn't know how to make you happy." I could have done better; was what she thought. I would have known how to hold you, be gentle with you. "I wanted to bang on the door and disturb you, to make him stop."

'You did disturb us. You had nightmares. Don't you remember?"

"No."

"You used to scream until we took you into bed with us." She'd been a funny child, intense, flushed.

"Did you like it?" Lara asked now. "Making love?"

"I liked being held," her mother whispered back. "Other-wise, what was there to like? I shut my eyes and tried not to notice."

"Poor Mother."

"We didn't do any of the things you do, when I was young. We didn't take our little hobbies seriously Only loose women smoked and wore makeup. They even have petting parties in college now." Her voice sounded aggrieved. "1 was reading about them in the Ladies' Home Journal."

"1 wasn't criticizing you," Lara said, “I just wanted to know how you felt." But the intimate moment had passed.

Chapter Three

Johnnie was sitting under the arbor, reading his paper and smoking when he saw Lara walking toward the garage with the portfolio she used when she went to her art class. She was glancing impatiently at her watch.

He thought she looked very beautiful. She was wearing a short green dress that showed her legs to the knee and a little hat that hugged her head like a cap. Her stockings caught the sun and reflected it -gleaming like armor. Everything about her costume called attention to itself. He didn't like her going to the city alone, it was a dangerous place.

Last time he was there buying kite supplies, he'd only had small coins. When he'd tried to give them to the shopkeeper, he'd scattered them, pushed them back across the counter at him, and said, "You must be a Jew. Only a Jew would try something like this. Get your pennies offa here." He'd had to wander around looking for someone who would take them. But when he told Lara, she'd only shrugged. 'Things like that never happen to me."

Now she was looking into the garage, then again at her watch. He folded his newspaper and walked quickly over to her.

"I wanted to show you something," he said, noticing she'd put something on her eyes to make them bigger. "There's been another piece in the Frankfurter Zeitung. See! He held it out to her; folded to the page. "Another incident of anti-Semitism. Quite alarming."

She glanced down for a second and then looked back into the garage.

What is Otis doing in there? Polishing the hood orna-ments? Just when we're going to the station. Johnnie, look, I'm sorry I can't concentrate on that now. I've got to catch the 9:05 train or I'll be late to my class."

He rattled the paper. "A synagogue was defaced. It's almost sure it was the National Socialists -or their sympa-thizers." He lowered his voice, "They scrawled NDS on the front door."

She made a gesture of dismissal and for a minute he felt like shaking her the way he had when she was little and wouldn't play.

"Oh Johnnie, it's bad and I'm sorry about it, really. But that's Germany -we don't even have family there anymore- it's not New Jersey or New York"

"It could be," he said darkly “I told you about the man in the kite store. He'd have liked to hit me in the face, I could feel it."

"He was angry because you gave him a handful of pennies. I would be too. Don't exaggerate." She touched his cheek lightly but he could tell she wasn't paying attention, was just thinking about getting away. This is all out of proportion."

"He called me Jew. He would have liked to beat me up, the way they beat up Jews on the street in Frankfurt. What's exag-gerated about that?" He slapped his open hand with the paper. "It's just a matter of time."

Otis backed the Chrysler out of the garage and Johnnie could see the relief on Lara's face. He'd have to find a better way of convincing her; he thought. She was a visual person. Maybe if he showed her the pictures. Distilled hatred that went right inside you. He imagined opening his book of cartoons and showing her page after page, watching her face pale as she finally understood.

But now Lara was turning her head restlessly with its green hat -like a bird about to take flight. Johnnie needed to make her pay attention. He had to draw her to him again by some gesture that she couldn't refuse. They were standing in front of a rough wood bench at the edge of the gravel path. He sat down, pulled Lara close to him and leaned his head against her breast. He heard her heart flutter. Yes, this was the way, he thought, his eyes filling with tears. Her hand rested an instant on his hair, then he could feel her tense. "Johnnie, no, you can't do that," she said, pulling away; "we're not children anymore." She straightened her dress, not looking him in the eyes, her face flushed. He stood up rubbing his cheek where it had rested against the silky fabric. His lips trembled. He felt as if she had struck him.

"Lara," he stammered, "I didn't..."

"1t's all right, John John," Lara said, her voice coming at him from some cold, distant place, "I'm not mad at you." She patted him lightly on the shoulder. Then she opened the car door, jumped in and let down her motoring scarf; wrapping it around her eyes and mouth. He could no longer see the blue vein beating in her throat.

Good, he thought grimly That's how he'd keep her. Veiled. If the Jew-haters didn't see you, they couldn't hurt you. Though it was a warm clear day, he felt chilled. He drew his head down between his shoulders so as not to see Otis and Lara driving off.

Chapter Four

Lara took the train from the Princeton station, settled down in her plush seat with Dorothy Parker's latest book on her lap -she didn't feel like reading- and tried to put Johnnie out of her mind. One good thing, maybe the best thing, about having a monthly allowance was that Lara could afford the little studio in New York. Even though it annoyed her mother, it gave Lara a space to be alone.

What she liked about the train was the succession of images framed by the large windows. But this time the dairy farms with red barns and cows standing at the salt licks failed to have their usual soothing effect. She felt restless and, since no one was sitting on the seat opposite hen she opened her portfolio and started to look through her latest sketches for her portrait of her father. She'd hoped that after a few days of not looking at them they'd seem better but they didn't, and she still couldn't figure out what was wrong with them. The features -high brow; deepset eyes, patrician nose with high arching nostrils, thin mouth under the brush of moustache were all there, the proportions seemed right, it was carefully drawn, she'd gained technically in the past weeks, but somehow it failed to add up.

She shut her portfolio and after an indefinite space, neither country nor city; saw the industrial smokestacks and factories that signaled the approach to New York.

The train drew into Penn Station and she got down into the swarming mass of people. It felt good to be anonymous for a while, buoyed up by the murmur of voices under the great glass dome. She had tea in the station restaurant, then took a cab from under the covered ramp uptown to 57th Street, to her art class.

She got out of her cab across the street and looked at the building for a moment before going in. It had a handsome Renaissance facade with three arched windows gracefully set off by Corinthian columns over the main door.

Above the highest set of windows, three decorative tablets were engraved with the words Painting, Architecture, and Sculpture.

"Note the Roman candelabrum," said someone behind her. She jumped. It was her life drawing teacher. He must have been at least fifty; had onion breath, and she was sure he dyed his hair. Besides, he was boring. She dutifully noted the candelabrum.

Inside, she took a place next to her friend Mina. The model, a young woman with bobbed hair, came out from behind a screen where she'd taken off her clothes, and sat down, twisting partially around, so they could draw the complicated curves. Lara wanted to get her engines started, energize herself, but the broken planes were hard to get and the woman's pretty; vapid face, smirking toward them over her shoulder; was annoying.

While she sketched the model's thighs-with red chalk-she kept seeing images of her father: reading his history books in the study, smoking, isolated. Even if I can't seem to finish his portrait, I should do something for him, she thought. He liked monuments. Maybe she could do a series of epic paintings-battles, cavorting horses. "Highly patriotic" the obituary had called him, noting with satisfaction the officer training class he had taken at Columbia to prepare "for any demand his country might make." She pictured her father walking admiringly past a succession of monumental canvases hung high on a white wall.

Her eyes moved up the woman's body, measuring the distance from shoulder to hip, and suddenly she imagined a frieze of women sitting waiting for their men's return from war, holding the dead bodies of their sons. The unasked-for images irritated her. She pressed her chalk so hard it broke and she had to take a fresh one. Why was it women were always waiting? Suffering? Why couldn't she think of anything else? She felt the life drain out of her lines. And in an attempt to recapture it, went over and over her drawing, changing the position of the arms until the woman looked like the goddess Kali with a hundred arms.

"You can do a lot better than this," the redheaded teacher told her, tapping with his pointer at the smudges and erasures.

She glared at him. Don't you ever have bad days?"

"Start again. You've got another hour. Look!" He took out a sheaf of drawings from the portfolio he was carrying around with him. This is what you should be doing. The line should be smoother; clear." His lines were clear all right. His woman looked like a vase or a still life of pears.

"I don't see her that way. Her body's really quite fluid... and then there's that imbecilic face."

"Imbecilic? She's a pretty girl." He stuck one of his sketches of the girl's face in front of her. "Pert nose, bowed mouth, good eyes, small chin. What's your difficulty?"

“The face is all makeup and pose. It isn't her." She saw the look of genuine bewilderment on his face and shrugged. "Forget it. Maybe I need glasses." Lara wanted to explore the contrast between the bored, empty face and the fluid, teasing lines of the body. It seemed to have an energy all its own that the face denied. Besides, it was sexy. Arm touching breast. The enticement of the red-brown nipple was honest in a way the bowed mouth wasn't. When the teacher had moved on she took another sheet of paper and started again. This time she drew a simple oval for the face and left it vacant, made the body more abstract. She wished she had her crayons. What it needed now was color. In her excitement she didn't even notice when the teacher came back until she felt his breath on her neck.

"We're trying to learn a craft, Miss Kamener. We're not surrealists, not modernists.. . not a la mode. I'm afraid, Miss Kamener; you don't think learning how to draw correctly is worthy of your efforts."

Lara saw Mina looking at her sympathetically and grim aced. God, she hated him. She concentrated on the spot at the back of his head where the hair thinned. He had combed a long strand over to cover it. She longed to twitch it aside. Imagined him standing with it dangling ridiculously by his ear. The ironic part was she wanted so much to learn. She took her chalk and sketched in the woman's insipid features.

Mina leaned over to her. "1 have a new teacher," she whispered. "1had my first lesson last week. He'd be perfect for you."

"He couldn't be worse than Red Wig," Lara whispered back "pompous ass."

'Well, Gorky isn't pompous, he's wonderful... ." She hesi-tated. "Though he's hard."

"Who cares, if I learn something. This…..”

"Shh." Mina scrawled Gorky's name and number on a piece of paper and slipped it to her.

Before Lara left she crumpled up the sketch she had made and threw it into the big bin by the door.

Mortimer picked her up after class and drove her off to Coney Island to have one of their discussions. He was an enthusiast of the Socratic method, felt, in fact, it was the only way to teach. He made Lara into a seminar of one. He was as ill-favored as Socrates, she thought, with those thick lips, but she liked the passion he put into education and was intrigued by the sheer number of things he knew. She had never succeeded in finding a subject he hadn't thought about. When he was only a college student he had gotten unlikely candidates through their doctoral exams by anticipating the key questions. And it wasn't just what he knew'; it was the way he managed to hold all the disparate chunks of knowledge in his mind and find out how they related. His aim -if she understood it rightly- was to organize everything we know into a graspable (and therefore teachable) whole. It seemed a heroic undertaking.

"You would have enjoyed my honors seminar today," he said as they wove their way out of the city "We were discussing the morality of a modern art form -the movies- and whether society was justified in restricting it. My students couldn't seem to grasp the fact that the principles for making prudent judgments about censorship have been around since Plato. If you just add Aquinas for the Christian dimension and Rousseau for the democratic, you have all the tools you need to deal with the problem."

'Didn't Plato banish poets from his Republic?"

"And painters." Mortimer gave her a shy look. "He thought of them as corrupters of the young. Societies have always banned things. The Christians banished the pagans, the Puritans banished Restoration comedy. Well, today there are people who want to restrict the movies." They were passing over the Brooklyn Bridge and with a wave of his hand he drew her attention to the masses of steel mesh and gave a brief history of the engineering feats involved in its construction. While she was still considering this, he returned to describing his seminar. "One of my students took the Sophist position that all ethical systems are based on shifting mores-there are no absolutes. He got quite passionate about it and ended up by defending pornography. I thought there was going to be a riot. Then another student took Plato's position that moral rela-tivism is a denial of reason. They went back and forth with the utmost engagement. It was really quite a perfect example of how the Socratic method works."

"What was the upshot?" Lara asked. "Will your prudent man shut the movies down? I hope not. I like the visual effects."

"We reached a compromise on what is basically an insoluble problem. The prudent man shouldn't interfere with content or technique- but though he can't tamper with the artist's soul, he can regulate the product for the good of society"

"No obscene movies for underage children?"

“Exactly."

"Shall we discuss the aesthetics of the movies?" he asked her when they had changed, set down their bags and were spreading out their towels. "That's a whole other topic. Or are you in the mood for something more outré Brancusi's goldfish? Goya as a satirist? African sculpture?"

Lara, narrowing her eyes so the sea and sand made a pleasing blur, thought of asking him where intuition and relaxed attention fit in his scheme of things. But she didn't feel like making the effort.

"You did bring our notebook, didn't you?" He looked at her big bag and smiled when he saw the top of her leather folio. "Of course you did." It was a large folio made of Florentine leather that she used to keep track of all the conversations she had with Mortimer; by name and number. She was up to fifty He reached over and caressed the leather lightly for a moment, running his fingers over the embossed fleur-de-lys and the stitching around the edges. It gave him an immense feeling of power to have her recording what they said.

"You know, Mortimer, I don't think I'm up to a Socratic dialogue today. I'm feeling like hell, in fact. At the rate I'm going, I'll never have enough paintings to show by next year. No ....... direction"." She waffled her hand, tacking to and fro.

Mortimer was struggling to set up the umbrella against a stiff breeze. "Why get into this competitive stuff? Let us -he meant the men- have the ulcers. You have a beautiful place to paint. Enjoy it."

He might be a genius but he was so stupid sometimes. "Mortimer. I'm 25 years old. I'm invisible. I need to be seen."

He ducked out from under the umbrella and squinted at her. "You're an art work, yourself, in that black swimming costume. Who else would wear black with white... what are they, thunderbolts? It's bold, it's beautiful." Mortimer was con-scious of her swelling hips and full round bottom; her small breasts pressing gently against the fabric.' The contrast between breasts and hips excited him. It reminded him of the mysterious statue of a hermaphrodite in the Villa Borghese museum. "I can't take my eyes off you," he continued fervidly "Honestly, I can't stop thinking about you.'

"Well, stop for just a few hours, can you? I love your mus-cular brain, but sometimes a woman needs something else." Suddenly she got up, ran to the water that was foaming softly against the sand and filling her bathing cap with water; ran back with it spilling over the edges and poured it next to her towel.

"What on earth are you doing? Have you gone bonkers?"

"We're going to do sand sculptures. Go fill your cap. Go on." His legs weren't badly shaped, she thought as he scurried off and she followed with her cap. Pale and too thin from under-use but not bad. carrying his own cap, even he seemed to loosen up a little. It's hard to be serious when you're running in the hot sun with water splashing on your legs. She dumped out her water and ran back to the foaming edge, scooped, went back faster. She heard him beginning to puff. She laughed.

'That's it. You've got some pink in your face."

"1t's the heat. I'm bushed." He collapsed next to the moistened sand. "If it weren't for you I’d never exert myself at all, you know."

"And I probably wouldn't read philosophy."

"So we're good for each other?"

"That doesn't logically follow." She drew an oval in the damp sand with two fingers, loving its slightly gritty squeaking resistance. "Come on, help me. This isn't a time to go blah." She dropped her hands and let her shoulders sag, showing him how he looked.

"1 haven't the least idea where to start."

"Here at the most important point." She mounded up the center and made two round holes at the bottom, so it looked like a fleshy broad nose. "It's yours."

"Not very flattering."

She sketched two lips with her finger; keeping her eyes on his face. He put his hand up, covering his lips which were large and bluish. "Hey!" he said behind his hand.

"Alright. You don't like being looked at any more than I do." She rubbed it out and started again, made a dog's head in half relief and a paw. "If you don't want to sit there and model you've got to work, make the back legs."

"1feel silly."

"Try" She took his hand and guided it, pressed it around the sand. His fingers resisted fastidiously.

"What's the matter?"

"It's wet. . .1 don't know . . .1 don't like it."

She sketched a jaunty tubular shape under her dog's belly where it joined his leg. Made two round shapes next to it. Setting it off. Then grinned at him.

"Have I got the scale wrong?"

He shrugged, turning violently red.

She made it three-dimensional, piling on sand. "Since you don't know, let's give him an immense one."

"Oh, really!" He looked around nervously to see if anyone was watching.

"1t is quite convincing, isn't it? If I had a funnel I could rig up a spout."

Mortimer turned away from her and lay down on his towel. "Spoilsport." She turned him over and patted warm sand onto his thigh. "If you won't help me you're going to be punished. I'm going to bury you alive."

He brushed the sand off weakly but she kept scooping, covering him with warm sand, patting and smoothing. After a while he got an erection, pulled her down and kissed her and she thought this time it was going to work. But though she felt his erection pressed against her; his mouth was nervous and dry. He wouldn't open his lips to let in her tongue. She took him by the shoulders and shook him lightly, willing him to loosen up but it was no use. He couldn't get the grace notes. Trills and complex harmonies were just not there. After a few more awk-ward moments of pressings and pushings, as though sheer will would make some epiphany, he got up and went down to the water to wash off the sand.

Posted by permission of the State University of New York Press, from Paradise Farm, by Brenda Webster

© Brenda Webster