“No,” Rachael said, “I knew you would stay with her.”
“You never forgive people,” Pat said.
“You, you mean? What do I care about your—” Her tough little face glowed. “You know what the first thing you said to me was, the first thing when you came in the door and saw me?”
“I know,” Pat said.
“If I had been in the kitchen instead of Art, you would have taken me down to the store, not him.”
“Not exactly,” she said. She began to unpack the things she had brought. Jim returned to the kitchen; he put bread into the toaster and laid out dishes and silverware.
“I’m going to eat,” he said.
Patricia said, “I brought over my oils. How do you feel about that?” She unfolded the small easel and unwrapped the tubes of paint and the turpentine and linseed oil and the palette. “I thought maybe I’d do some painting. Will the smell drive you out of the apartment?”
“No,” he said from the kitchen.
“What about the mess?”
“It’s okay.”
“Excuse me,” she said to Rachael. In the bedroom, with the shades down, she changed to a pair of blue cotton trousers, Chinese trousers, and then she picked out a plaid sport shirt and buttoned it up, thinking how loose it was, how comfortable to work in. And then she identified the shirt as one of Art’s; she had bought it for him to wear. A little hysterically she shed the sport shirt and pushed it away in a suitcase; instead she put on a T-shirt, paint-smeared, from her college days.
In the living room Rachael ignored the paints. She had not even taken off her coat.
“Can I play some records?” Patricia asked.
“Go ahead,” Jim said. At the stove he was frying himself ham and eggs.
Sinking down before the record cabinet, she examined the albums. At last she pulled out an album of Bach Brandenburg Concertos—the album held four of them, one after another—and with the records playing on the phonograph she proceeded to mix the paints.
“Bach at nine in the morning?” Jim said.
“Shall I take it off?”
“It’s eccentric,” he said.
“I always liked it,” she said, “the Brandenburg Concertos. You played them for me . . . we played them all the time.”
Rachael said, “What are you going to paint?”
“I don’t know,” she said levelly. “I haven’t decided.”
“You’re not going to paint me.”
“I don’t want to paint you.” On the easel she arranged a square of fiber paper. Her brushes, gummy and stiff, had to be soaked; she placed them upright in a glass of turpentine. The smell of paint and turpentine filled the room, and she opened two of the windows. Jim disappeared into the bathroom. The whir-r-r of his electric razor startled her, and she thought how long it had been since she had heard an electric razor in the morning.
“Did you stay here last night?” Rachael said to her.
“Of course she did,” Jim said from the bathroom. “What do you think I did, leave her, for Art to knock around? I’m keeping her with me, where she belongs. When she feels better and this thing isn’t hanging over us, we’re going to remarry.”
Rachael said, “And I can go to hell.”
“No,” he said. He finished shaving and put on a white shirt and tie. His chin was smooth; his hair was combed. Now he unclipped a pair of pressed slacks from a hanger in the closet.
“What then?” Rachael said.
“You have a husband.”
“What about you?”
He said, “I’m not your husband.”
“You are,” Rachael said. She continued to look at him, but she said nothing more.
“I feel so goddamn sorry for you,” he said. “But this is just a long shot. It’s too much of a long shot for me, Rachael.”
“You thought about it. The first night you stayed with me.”
Cold morning air blew into the room from the open windows, and Patricia shivered. On her arms goose pimples formed; she stopped to rub them. She felt dizzy. From the paint fumes, she decided. And from not having eaten any breakfast. A drop of paint fell on the rug, and she realized, stricken, that she had forgotten to put down newspapers.
Papers, in piles, were in the cupboard under the sink. She got a stack of them and spread them over the rug. Maybe, she thought, she should roll back the rug. How long it had been. She had forgotten how to go about it.
When Jim came out of the bathroom, she said, “I better get the rug out of the way.”
“You going to dance?”
“No, I don’t want to get paint on it.”
“Paint in the kitchen,” he said. He put on his coat.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“I’m taking Rachael home. She shouldn’t be here. I’ll be back; you go ahead and paint.”
Patricia said, “You don’t know how long you’ll be gone, I suppose.”
“If I get tied up,” he said, “I’ll call you.”
“Good luck,” she said, studying her paints.
“Same to you.” He kissed her on the temple and then nodded Rachael toward the door.
“Goodbye,” Rachael said.
The door shut after the two of them. She was alone in the apartment, with her paints.
On the phonograph the stack of records had come to an end. She lifted them up onto the spindle and restarted them. The same music, she realized, but she did not care. She increased the volume, and then she kicked off her shoes and returned to painting. For an hour she worked; she involved herself in the picture. It was nonobjective, an exercise to bring back to her the sense of the brushes and colors. But her touch remained clumsy, and at ten o’clock she gave up and wandered into the kitchen for something to eat.
How still the apartment was.
After, she had eaten, she returned to her painting. By now the picture was a failure, and she tossed the square of fiber paper aside.
On a fresh square she started over. She sketched a face, the spotty circle of a man’s face. Jim Briskin, she decided. The picture was of him. But it did not look like him. The image had a muddied quality, as if the flesh were running together, slipping and sliding. The image, the face on the fiber paper, deteriorated until it was a grotesque, mask-like thing, feeble and infantile. She gave up and put the brushes into the glass of turpentine.
Now the time was twelve noon and he had not come back. She washed her hands. The records on the phonograph had long ago finished and been put back in the album. She got them out again and restarted them. With the music playing she entered the bedroom and began searching through the dresser drawers.
In a manila folder were letters and pictures that he had kept. After a minute she located the photograph she wanted; it was a picture taken during a camping trip to Mount Diablo and it showed him full-face, smiling. In this picture he did not look worried, and she liked him that way. He wore a canvas shirt, and behind him was the car they had owned, and their tent, and the rocks and brush of the mountainside. She herself had taken the picture; her shadow fell across him.
Propping a fresh square of fiber paper on the easel, she tacked the photograph beside it and began again. But still the picture did not come. At one o’clock she tossed the brush down, wiped her hands, and went into the kitchen for something to drink.
On the tile drainboard she spread out the makings of the drink: the ice cube tray, the gin, the lemon, the tumbler and spoon, and the jigger glass. Holding the tray under the hot water, she smacked the metal with her hand; ice cubes slid into the sink, and she put two of them in the tumbler. Onto the ice cubes she poured gin, and then she added an inch or two of lemonade.