Weeping into my fondue, with Stash's dog Andrew looking up at me with a worried expression, I decided to call my mother for reassurance. Our relationship had always been good. I still took my directions from her, even though it did seem a lot of the time her ideas backfired. I let her phone ring once, a signal for her to call me back. That way the money I owed Stash for phone bills was kept to a minimum. "My apartment's all ready," I said. "A moving man from the Village Voice is coming to help me move my things tomorrow. He said he weighs two hundred and seventy-five pounds." I started to bawl. "Stash is right," I said. "My self-esteem is too low, I'm too messy, no one can live with me."
"That's not true," my mother said. "No one can live in one room with a man who sulks; what are you, crazy? As for being too messy: I remember when you first moved into his apartment, the bathroom carpet was so mildewed, something resembling Rice Krispies was growing around the toilet. This you told me yourself. Stash was so lazy that when Roland came to New York he had to change the toilet seat cover for you. Do you want me to go on? I wilclass="underline" Stash wants to be a bachelor type, and what you're looking for is something more."
I had to think. It was true that what she was saying was true. Intellectually I knew our relationship had its problems. But I had been prepared to find solutions. My little nerve endings were frazzled. "Maybe you're right," I said. "I'm in pain, however.
"I remember when your father and I divorced," she said. "I never thought I'd get over it. But after a few months, I thought to myself: Did I really want to go on making goat cheese for the rest of my life? Obviously I had just been playing a role. As soon as I saw the possibilities in life, I threw out all my natural cotton garments and got myself some fancy underwear. Then I met Stanley, who bought me a microwave and took me to Club Med."
"That's how you are," I said. "That's not how I am. I'm going to be lonesome, I'm going to sit alone in that apartment and make fondue and cry into it."
"Give me a break," my mother said. "What was so great about this guy anyway?"
"I don't know," I said. "He was nice. When he wasn't sulking, sometimes he used to dance around the apartment and sing me a little song."
"That doesn't sound so different from any other man."
"You're kidding," I said. "The thing is, for two years I was never really certain if I actually wanted to be with him. As soon as I decided I was genuinely in love, he told me he would never marry me because I went out for coffee with a man last summer."
"Get a tape recording that tells you you're wonderful," my mother said. "Stash had a way of treating you like a leper. Go back to London, men appreciated you there, didn't they?"
"I was thinking about my lunch with Lord Simeon," I said. "Even though when I met him he hadn't seen you for ten years, he remembered you at once. You must have something that I don't. Did I tell you how a few months ago I went to hear him give a lecture at Cooper Union, on ethics and morality?"
"So what happened?" my mother said.
I started to cry again, my mother was a good audience. "I'm eating dinner now," I said. "I had this terrible craving for fondue. For two days I had this craving, finally I went out and bought a package of it for dinner."
"You got that idea from me, didn't you?" my mother said.
"No, I didn't," I said. "What do you mean?"
"I must have told you," my mother said. "Two nights ago I had some people over for wine and cheese. At the last minute one woman called and said she couldn't make it to the dinner. So I panicked, thinking that all these people expected dinner, and I went out and got a package of that Swiss Knight fondue. There was only enough for two people, but I thought it was delicious."
"You didn't tell me," I said.
"What kind did you get?"
"Swiss Knight," I said. "It cost three-fifty."
"I paid five dollars," my mother said. "Maybe the next time you come to visit us you could buy a few packages and bring them. I thought it was delicious. Are you sure I didn't mention it?"
"No," I said.
"So what happened when you went to hear Lord Simeon?"
"I went up to him afterward," I said.
"Wait a minute," my mother said. "This is a very bad connection. Can you hear two people talking?"
"No," I said.
"I have to hear this," my mother said. "This girl is saying she's going to burn her briefcase. Interesting." I waited while my mother listened to the other voices. "Okay, okay," she said at last. "So what happened?"
"After Lord Simeon's lecture I went up to him and asked him whatever happened to the body of Jeremy Bentham. He was pleasant enough, but he obviously didn't have the slightest idea of who I was. He looked frightened. As soon as he got a chance he moved away."
"He has such nice eyes, though, doesn't he?" my mother said.
"I guess," I said. I wondered what that body actually looked like: wigged, befuddled, decked in a bowler hat and frilly bows, imprisoned behind fingerprinted glass. I could almost picture his face: amused, slightly superior, maybe a touch of wistfulness. There he was in the hallway, the students passing endlessly before him, in a kind of life after death. Or perhaps he was still tucked away in some closet at King's College, still unransomed.
On and Off the African Veldt
Ginger Booth, my dealer, handled only male artists and I was the most important. She had said this to me often, when I called her at three or four in the morning just to check. I had to bring some paintings over to her—she had to take a look at them to decide whether or not we should include them in my upcoming show. Before now she had always worked out of her SoHo apartment, but she was finally about to open her own gallery. This made her frantic; she had workmen redoing her apartment, and she was also running a couple of blocks away to supervise putting up the walls and floor of her new gallery.
So she was in a bit of a snit when she let me into her apartment. The first thing she said was, "Marley, why couldn't you have gotten this stuff to me sooner? You know I've got a buyer coming over in fifteen minutes to look at some things—how can I sell your paintings to her if I haven't even seen them?"
"Because I didn't even finish putting the details on them until late last night!" I said. She was going to have a group show of some of her artists as her first show in the new place, but as I put the largest painting on the ground, the one I wanted her to use in the opening show, a big chunk of clay fell off the upper left-hand corner and crashed onto the floor.
"But what do you call this?" she said, picking up the pieces and crumbling them further in her hand, so that there was no likelihood of my sticking them back on. "Marley, what could you be thinking of? I can't sell this. The painting's falling apart."
"That's all that's going to happen. The rest will stay on. I guarantee."
"I can't sell paintings of yours if they're going to fall apart, Marley. What am I going to do if ten years from now a client comes to me with one of your works he's bought from me and it's all fallen down to the bottom of the frame in a lot of pieces?" And she got all huffy and frittered around her apartment like a potato in hot oil, leaving me to feel embarrassed at the empty table. She was a good sort, with a little manikin face and a brittle New York fashion, fine for keeping me in my place. I didn't pay her any mind: I had a hot date for that night, believe me I had more important things to worry about.
Meanwhile, she went into the bedroom to see what the workmen were up to. "You can leave the ladder here, for the time being. Do you think you can put the rest of the putty in around the window tomorrow? Because I'd like you all to start work on the gallery as soon as possible, and the rest of the work on my apartment can wait." She lectured some big wall painter like a terrier going after a bull; the big lummox never even knew what hit him. Then she came back out, without bothering to look at me.