And then came her questions to Lillian: “Why am I not free? I ran away from my husband and my two little girls many years ago. I did not know it then, but I didn’t want to be a mother, the mother of children. I wanted to be the mother of creations and dreams, the mother of artists, the muse and the mistress. In my marriage I was buried alive. My husband was a man without courage for life. We lived as if he were a cripple, and I a nurse. His presence killed the life in me so completely that I could hardly feel the birth of my children. I became afraid of nature, of being swallowed by the mountains, stifled by the forest, absorbed by the sea. I rebelled so violently against my married life that in one day I destroyed everything and ran away, abandoning my children, my home and my native country. But I never attained the life I had struggled to reach. My escape brought me no liberation. Every night I dream the same dream of prisons and struggles to escape. It is as if only my body escaped, and not my feelings. My feelings were left over there like roots dangling when you tear a plant too violently. Violence means nothing. And it does not free one. Part of my being remained with my children, imprisoned in the past. Now I have to liberate myself wholly, body and soul, and I don’t know how. The violent gestures I make only tighten the knot of resistance around me. How can one liquidate the past? Guilt and regrets can’t be shed like an old coat.”
Then she saw that Lillian was affected by her story and she added: “I am grateful to Jay for having met you.”
Only then Lillian remembered her painful secret. For a moment she wanted to lay her head on Hlen’s shoulder and confess to her: “I only came because I was afraid of you. I came because I thought you were going to take Jay away from me.” But now that Helen had revealed her innermost dreams and pains, Lillian felt: perhaps she needs me more than she needs Jay. For he cannot console. He can only make her laugh.
At the same time she thought that this was equally effective. And she remembered how much Jay liked audacity in women, how some feminine part of him liked to yield, liked to be chosen, courted. Deep down he was timid, and he liked audacity in women. Helen could be given the key to his being, if Lillian told her this. If Lillian advised her to take the first step, because he was a being perpetually waiting to be ignited, never set off by himself, always seeking in women the explosion which swept him along.
All around her there were signs, signs of danger and loss. Without knowing consciously what she was doing, Lillian began to assume the role she feared Jay might assume. She became like a lover. She was full of attentiveness and thoughtfulness. She divined Helen’s needs uncannily. She telephoned her at the moment Helen felt the deepest loneliness. She said the gallant words Helen wanted to hear. She gave Helen such faith as lovers give. She gave to the friendship an atmosphere of courtship which accomplished the same miracles as love. Helen began to feel enthusiasm and hunger again. She forgot her illness to take up painting, her singing, and writing. She recreated, redecorated the place she was living in. She displayed art in her dressing, care and fantasy. She ceased to feel alone.
On a magnificent day of sun and warmth Lillian said to her: “If I were a man, I would make love to you.”
Whether she said this to help Helen bloom like a flower in warmth and fervor, or to take the place of Jay and enact the courtship she had imagined, which she felt she had perhaps deprived Helen of, she did not know.
But Helen felt as rich as a woman with a new love.
At times when Lillian rang Helen’s bell, she imagined Jay ringing it. And she tried to divine what Jay might feel at the sight of Helen’s face. Every time she fully conceded that Helen was beautiful. She asked herself whether she was enhancing Helen’s beauty with her own capacity for admiration. But then Jay too had this capacity for exalting all that he admired.
Lillian imagined him coming and looking at the paintings. He would like the blue walls. It was true he would not like her obsessions with disease, her fear of cancer. But then he would laugh at them, and his laughter might dispel her fears.
In Helen’s bathroom, where she went to powder and comb her hair, she felt a greater anguish, because there she was nearer to the intimacy of Helen’s life. Lillian looked at her kimono, her bedroom slippers, her creams and medicines as if trying to divine with what feelings Jay might look at them. She remembered how much he liked to go behind the scenes of people’s lives. He liked to rummage among intimate belongings and dispel illusions. It was his passion. He would come out triumphantly with a jar: and this, what is this for? as if women were always seeking to delude him. He doubted the most simple things. He had often pulled at her eyelashes to make certain they were not artificial.
What would he feel in Helen’s bathroom? Would he feel tenderness for her bedroom slippers? Why were there objects which inspired tenderness and others none? Helen’s slippers did not inspire tenderness. Nothing about her inspired tenderness. But it might inspire desire, passion, anything else—even if she remained outside of one, like a sculpture, a painting, a form, not something which penetrated and enveloped one. But inhuman figures could inspire passion. Even if she were the statue in a Chirico painting, unable to mingle with human beings, even if she could not be impregnated by others or live inside of another all tangled in threads of blood and emotion.
When they went out together Lillian always expected the coincidence which would bring the three of them together to the same concert, the same exhibit, the same play, But it never happened. They always missed each other. All winter long the coincidences of city life did not bring the three of them together. Lillian began to think that this meeting was not destined, that it was not she who was keeping them apart.
Helen’s eyes grew greener and sank more and more into the myth. She could not feel. And Lillian felt as if she were keeping from her the man who might bring her back to life. Felt almost as if she were burying her alive by not giving her Jay.
Perhaps Lillian was imagining too much.
Meanwhile Helen’s need of Lillian grew immense. She was not contented with Lillian’s occasional visits. She wanted to fill the entire void of her life with Lillian. She wanted Lillian to stay over night when she was lonely. The burden grew heavier and heavier.
Lillian became frightened. In wanting to amuse and draw Helen away from her first interest in Jay, she had surpassed herself and become this interest.
Helen dramatized the smallest incident, suffered from insomnia, said her bedroom was haunted at night, sent for Lillian on every possible occasion.
Lillian was punished for playing the lover. Now she must be the husband, too. Helen had forgotten Jay but the exchange had left Lillian as a hostage.
Not knowing how to lighten the burden she said one day: “You ought to travel again. This city cannot be good for you. A place where you have been lonely and unhappy for so long must be the wrong place.”
That very night there was a fire in Helen’s house, in the apartment next to hers. She interpreted this as a sign that Lillian’s intuitions for her were wise. She decided to travel again.
They parted at the corner of a street, gaily, as if for a short separation. Gaily, with green eyes flashing at one another. They lost each other’s address. It all dissolved very quickly, like a dream.
And then Lillian felt free again. Once again she had worn the warrior armor to protect a core of love. Once again she had worn the man’s costume.
Jay had not made her woman, but the husband and mother of his weakness.
Lillian confessed to Jay that she was pregnant. He said: “We must find the money for an abortion.” He looked irritated. She waited. She thought he might slowly evince interest in the possibility of a child. He revealed only an increased irritation. It disturbed his plans, his enjoyment. The mere idea of a child was an intrusion. He let her go alone to the doctor. He expressed resentment. And then she understood.