Opposites attract, not just between the sexes but within them, Emily determined, supporting her face in her hands. It didn’t really bother her that Christine didn’t like him. Emily was not mad with love. Dispassionately she rode the subway to the Cloisters and with her took Mansfield Park and the long subway ride was an empty, endless room filled with people who argued about whether or not acting was a corrupting influence, particularly on young women, because lines that were not true were spoken from their lips. They dissembled. When Emily applied cream to her face and hands she studied her skin, which didn’t yet have any lines. She wanted to have great, deep lines when she was old but she hoped her cheekbones would hold the skin up, much as a clothesline holds up clothes. When I have lines they’ll be my part, like an actor’s part. The English musician had compared her with Edith Sitwell, whose eccentricity was one day to be matched by Emily’s, he teased. Emily considered that a compliment, even though she felt he could never understand how she was different, but nevertheless, she monologued in front of the Unicorn Tapestry, nevertheless, being eccentric is taking liberties. And give me liberty or give me death.
Emily’s favorite history teacher might have appreciated Emily’s spouting that tired line in a medieval setting. Professor Wilson had announced on her first day teaching the freshmen that she didn’t want to be their friend, just their teacher, and Emily decided to become her friend. She set about on this quest and announced it to Christine, who insisted that Emily shouldn’t expect everyone to love her. Emily demurred, rebelling passively against the suggestion, hearing someone else inside her chant, Love is only a word and beauty is only a word and sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. That was a lie. More than anything else words hurt. That’s why I really hate words, and then aloud told Christine that she had written a line, “Wordlessly we stalk words,” and after this conversation would develop it. Christine, studying psychology and philosophy, talked about Jung. Had he really been a Nazi? He had written “No matter how much the parents, etc., have sinned against the child, the adult who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with. Only a fool is interested in other people’s guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise learn only from their own guilt.” Each thought about the other and their friendship, which elicited dark thoughts and feelings, as well as the opposite.
The other’s position was somehow more advantageous. Emily was an only child, envied by Christine, who had a younger brother, who was envied by Emily, who felt deprived of a real family. One had money, the other didn’t. One had a living father, the other didn’t. Together they dissected the minutiae of their lives, often stressing their similarities or muting their differences to make them seem more like likenesses. People called each by the other’s name, even though they didn’t look alike, and Christine more than Emily found it disturbing. It was as if, in Christine’s eyes, Emily was doing something to make that happen. On the other hand, Christine was more successful with men, and when they were out together Emily found herself receding to the back of the booth. She’s more beautiful than I am, Emily concluded sadly, and was angry at Christine involuntarily. But men were supposed to occupy a separate, defined space that did not intrude upon their friendship. The day turned into evening and the evening, night, and the best friends talked and talked. Why, Emily wondered, had love taken the form it did. Why had dying for love become one of the conventions. And was it really necessary to suffer a broken heart. When had we learned to. Even suffering, crying, sounds different in different countries and we react to pain with different sounds when we speak different languages.
Edith watched their relationship like a mother cat who is no longer feeding her kittens. She knew trouble when she saw it, but there was no way, hardly even the words with which to broach the subject with Emily, who was more sensitive than she had ever been. Allowed to be more sensitive. For certainly if Edith had grown up in a household where there had been more money, she might have been gentler, she thought. In a way that Edith couldn’t fathom, Emily could sense her, knew when to avoid her, or knew how to talk with her when she didn’t want anyone near her. The quality was remarkable, but there was no future in being sensitive, no future in poetry, or even in prophecy. But children — and Emily was still a child — didn’t think about the future and money, especially Emily, whose father, a lawyer, kept her allowance coming despite any problems he or her mother might have about the way Emily dressed or the people she saw. Probably Ethical Culture — had she said he was a Quaker — Edith thought as she stacked the toilet paper in the utility closet, which took up half the shelf space, but such a bargain and now she wouldn’t have to think about toilet paper for half a year at least. Unless she threw a lot of dinner parties, but she didn’t imagine she would.
The sun came through Emily’s bathroom window and cast light on her face and his. He was sleeping on the floor, on a thin sheet of foam rubber he called his pallet, his bed when he was with her. His guitar was under her bed. When she opened her eyes she saw his black underpants. Bikinis. He slept with his back toward her, his long body below her like a rug of flesh. She’d missed another sixteenth-century poetry class. She grabbed her robe to cover herself. He walked around naked in front of her. Christine said he was a tease. But she hated him anyway. His body. She told herself she didn’t care. Love isn’t like this. She kicked him in the ass. If your people hadn’t left England we might not all want to be famous.
The child educator called on Edith just often enough to satisfy something, but she would never again consider marriage. She admitted to herself that she was comfortable with her life, not content; there were longings. But she liked waking up and going out and answering to no one. There was a way in which feeling loss kept her husband with her, and she didn’t want to give him up. Loss had a shape, a presence she didn’t have to share with anyone. When you get older you don’t want to have to share with anyone. She could be as selfish as she wanted. She walked around the apartment, turning off the lights. All those anymores. Could she raise Emily’s rent two dollars a week to keep up with the electric bills? It’s still a good idea. Edith ran her fingers through her short thick hair. It had never curled when she was a child and now she wore it as she liked it, close to her head, the shape of which she was proud. Her hair was convenient. Like having a woman in to clean the apartment once a week, something she hadn’t done when her husband was alive. Hiring the black woman caused her conflict. Hadn’t she marched for civil rights as early as the forties. Shouldn’t she hire a white woman, but the state employment agency sent her Helen, who was about her age, and Helen needed the work. And why should Edith stand on principle when to do so meant denying this woman a source of income, and by now they’d been together, she and Helen, six years, and how could she have fixed the world by not hiring her. Edith sighed audibly in the empty apartment and left a note for Helen — her son had been sick, maybe heroin, but Edith didn’t ask — and ran her hands once more through her hair. A trace of lipstick still on her lips, she added some more orange and smiled at herself, as if pleased not with her image but with something else that was not pictured.
Helen and Emily met in the kitchen and had some coffee that Edith had left for Helen. Or maybe it was just left over. Helen asked Emily how her poems and painting were going and Emily asked Helen about her son. Emily wondered if Helen really liked Edith, if she could really like her. Not wanting Helen to see Keith lying on the floor, she walked backward into the room, blocking the door as she talked, almost stepping on his head. Helen wanted one of Emily’s paintings and Emily was touched. Helen laughed about it later, Emily walking backward, hiding her guy. White people were so funny. Her son got angry when she said funny. When Helen brought home the painting she’d asked Emily for, to go over the couch, her son walked out of the apartment.