“I’ve never heard anything like that. He wasn’t drunk?”
“We shared the bottle of wine Joanne brought, but three people on a bottle of wine? No, hardly drunk. He slept on the couch and she slept in the other twin bed in the room Demeter and I shared. In the morning when we got up he was playing with the cat.”
“Were you tempted to keep the money?”
“It was money. I spent it.”
“That was the only time you ever saw him?”
“He came one other time to the house in Maine right after we moved in, but he obviously didn’t remember meeting me in Virginia. Either that, or I’d changed more than I realized. We never want to think that, do we? I’d had long hair when we first met — another thing Dem said he’d loved about me, at first sight — but by the time I saw Truman Capote again, I’d had it cut. I was just Demeter Farrell’s middle-aged wife. He looked right through me, even when he asked in that whispery voice where the loo was. I pointed and he hesitated. He sort of lingered in the kitchen as the others went out to the back porch — there’d been talk of his writing something about Demeter’s new show for the New Yorker—and then he set down his iced tea, I think it was. He turned his back on me and walked upstairs, where he must have known there’d be another bathroom, and he used that one instead. That’s the end of my Truman Capote stories. Now they’re yours!”
“What did you think of someone coming in and accepting your hospitality and basically brushing you off?”
“I was only the famous photographer’s wife.”
“Would women have treated you that way?”
“Most all our visitors were men.”
“But you mentioned Diane Arbus in your letter.”
“Her daughter went to school in Maine. She built her own yurt to live in. She loved her school. Diane was skeptical of how much education she was getting, but she was glad Amy — that was her name — had found a place she felt she belonged. Diane Arbus certainly didn’t autograph anything before leaving!”
“Didn’t May Sarton also live in York?”
“She did, and we went out of our way to avoid her. She was a very contentious person.”
“I’m obviously lucky you agreed to see me! Here comes the coffee, finally. They aren’t in any hurry here, are they? Just meeting you has put my mind back on my project. What a strange story about Capote, though. Do you think he mistook himself for Picasso and thought anything could be his merely for signing a napkin?”
“See the man coming in, in the Boston Whaler? Diane Arbus should be here. He used to be Karen Welber. Had surgery at Johns Hopkins. Ken’s been married for thirty years to a German girl who doesn’t speak a word of English, or pretends she doesn’t. She pantomimes to the butcher how she wants the meat prepared. The butcher hates it when she comes in.”
“Is that right? Really?”
“Yes. There’s also a midget who lives in town.”
“But you like it here? You haven’t thought about getting away for the winter, at least? Florida’s not for you?”
“Not for me, no.”
“Some dependable people who shovel you out? All that?”
“I haven’t had any trouble doing the walkway and the steps myself, and if Adver isn’t too drunk or hungover, he gets to my driveway quite fast, since his ex lives on the same street and would kill him if he didn’t drive the plow over before the snow stopped falling.”
“Your husband did a different sort of photography, of course, but did he… for his own purposes, I mean — did he photograph people in town? Landscapes? Anything like that?”
“A lot of nude shots of me, but no landscapes, no.”
“Oh, I see!”
“I was kidding.”
“Oh! Right!”
He blushed! She’d made him blush!
“What exactly are your plans when your young friend’s fiancé comes on the bus, Terry? Hadn’t you better check on Hannah’s state of mind? Everyone seems to have ditched you with a twenty-one-year-old girl. I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“I know what you mean. I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself, like I’ve got to see that this comes to some good conclusion, even though it’s not really my responsibility.”
“It’s none of my business, but when you were younger, were you Hannah’s mother’s boyfriend? I couldn’t make that out from the way you told the story.”
“Well, I–I don’t really know if I was. I mean, at the time I thought I was, or at least that that might happen any moment. She always had her various unhappy romances going on. But we had something special, I know we had that. It was probably just wishful thinking on my part that there would be anything more. You know, I don’t tend to talk about her. No one’s ever asked me that.”
“Your being her daughter’s godfather, and your long friendship…”
“Oh, perfectly logical question, exactly right. I don’t think I knew quite what to do. I didn’t want to ruin the friendship, I suppose. So I never did anything — anything that a real boyfriend would do, I mean — though sex alone doesn’t account for closeness, does it?”
“As you mentioned earlier: Bishop and Lowell.”
“Exactly. Perfect example. They had so much in common and they were so much on each other’s side. Really quite remarkable, that friendship. And then at the very end, you have to wonder what he was thinking when he was going to visit her here. Here being Maine, I mean. He meant to bring Mary McCarthy along, and Elizabeth Bishop was living with a woman, and she didn’t want Mary McCarthy to see that, or whatever it was she feared, so Lowell didn’t come. It was obtuse of him, really stupid. They never saw each other again. It would have been the last visit. It’s really too sad to think about.”
“That isn’t Hannah down there throwing rocks in the water, is it?”
“It is Hannah. My god! I didn’t even see her crouched down there. I’ve known her since she was four days old. Yet you never know another person, do you? That’s the old cliché, at least. She’s always been willful. She’s always felt her way is the right way. What a strange feeling to be spying on her from afar. Sometimes when they’re that age you feel like they’re performing for you, but that’s not what we’re seeing.”