Memory as Wind

Lance Olsen

Love is friendship set to music.
—Jackson Pollock

No, that’s not it, that’s not how it happens, it’s—

—because I’m here, have been for years and years, in the backseat of this Oldsmobile 88, top down, wind enraged, tearing along some country road at night, Jackson drunk at the wheel, Ruthie by his—

—the world all quick nervous giggles and skinfizz, the whirled world, the world like leaves spinning in a crazy autumn gust, only it’s not autumn, no, that’s, it’s what, it’s—

—August, where did the summer, nearly ten o’clock, yes, warm damp air cramped with overripe foliage, faint sea rot—

—except here won’t fit into time—

—this brutal unsteadiness—

—Ruthie going slow down, Jackson, honey, slow down—

—only he won’t slow down, isn’t even thinking about slowing down, because he’s angry, he’s been angry on and off all day—

—because this should be a party, that’s what he, we should be having a goddamn party, he saying, because—

—because Springs, New York, is Springs, New York, because I’m here, because his wife is in Paris, because Lee won’t leave him and won’t stay with him, and maybe they’re getting a divorce and maybe they aren’t—

—because Ruthie phoned me day before yesterday, Wednesday, no, Thursday, it was Thursday, that’s—

—she in the city to get away from him a few days, clear her head, inviting me out to their farmhouse on Long Island to keep her company, keep her sanity—

—she needed her best friend by her side, she saying, someone to be with her, anyone that’s not, could I—

—we have this thing between us, she telling me over the phone, don’t get me wrong, Jackson and me, we have this thing, anyone can see it right away—

—you’ve got to realize he’s my life, sweetie, I’m everything to him, it’s—

—that’s what scares me, I’ve never lived with anybody else before, a man, I mean, never lived with a, not like this, the intensity of him, the endless storm of Jackson, he goes off, you’ll see what I—

—I never know who he’s—

—sometimes my lover sometimes my father sometimes my collaborator sometimes my little kid and I can’t stand the—

—I don’t know what to do, how to behave—

—I’m rambling, I know, I’m sorry, I’m rambling—

—please just say you’ll come out for the weekend, a day or two—

—get away from the, it’ll do you, enjoy the farmhouse, see how I, we can swim at the beach, would you like that, the pebbled beach, Gardiners Bay, swim and drink champagne, wouldn’t that be—

—meet him, see his paintings, tell me what you—

—help me get a little perspective on everything—

—because, you know, he said he’s going to divorce her, that’s what he, he promised, I believe him, he’s ready, you can tell, it’s taken such a long time, but he’s—

—he just has to get all the finances in order, it isn’t easy, it’s—

—I’m twenty-six, how did this, him forty-four, good god—

—the whole thing’s mad and beautiful and unimaginable and I need to get my bearings, get a little, I don’t know—

—you can help, I know you can, I’m in over my head, sweetie, I’m the first to admit it, obviously I am, and I love it and I hate it and say you’ll come, Edith, say you will—

—because Thursday evening I’m on the phone with her like that, Ruthie’s voice churning like clothes in a dryer, and Saturday morning we’re boarding a train in Penn Station, me with my one tiny worn suitcase, tan with brown trim—

—everybody needs to know when she reaches out her hand there will be someone else there to take hold—

—a couple hours later I’m there, here, in the backseat of a shiny green soft-top, Oldsmobile 88, tearing down a country road like time is broken—

—I can’t remember what it’s supposed to—

—which way it’s supposed to go or how fast—

—Ruthie saying come on, baby, you’re scaring Edith, and for some reason I can’t stop giggling, I don’t know why, it’s terrible, I’m terrified, this isn’t—

—I can’t stop giggling and can’t stop struggling to think about anything else, about—

—about how Ruthie and I go so far back, that’s, yes, like we’re sisters, family, and you don’t let family down, do you, never, that’s what they say, despite the evidence, no matter what, you—

—Ruthie making twenty-five bucks a week when we met, twenty-five, collecting unemployment insurance, working behind the desk at that gallery on Fifty-Sixth Street—

—all she wanted in life was to be a painter, remember, she’d do anything, that’s what she—

—every day that’s what she told me, I’m going to be a painter even if it kills me—

—how she gave off that uneasy smell, you meet it everywhere in the city, this combination of naked panic and need—

—chubby rats sliding across subway platforms and incoherence, restlessness and savage competition, Rome burning on every block—

—once you’ve lived in New York every other place feels like a mistake, that’s what they say, I wouldn’t, I’m not—

—only all Ruthie and I can afford to do is sit around her kitchen table on Sixteenth Street and talk about someday, the next big thing, because that’s all we have left to talk about, that’s—

—we used to call it hope—

—the kind you don’t believe in but pretend you do to make conversation and another week of nothing pass by—

—talk about makeup and movies in the scruffy fifth-floor walkup she shares with a roommate who plays cello and wears thick tortoise-rimmed glasses that make her look like a communist—

—her name, the roommate’s—

—Sandra, Sandy, yes—

—Sandra, Sandy, in possession of the best scam ever—

—three or four affairs going at once, handsome guys, faithful, all young, some married, others not, who cares, you only get one life—

—when things heat up she out of the blue announcing she’s pregnant, early days, no bump, no prospects—

—missed her, that’s what she, turning weepy, begging them to—

—you should see how they believe without question, power of faith, that’s why religion works, spooked and proud—

—coughing up the nine hundred for that trip to Havana so fast you—

—which is how she makes enough to play the cello, buy food, attend a concert now and—

—you’ve got to admire her, Sandy, how she can turn any day into an opera—

—the whining—

—the bogus morning sickness—

—making believe she’s tracking down the right doctor, the right contacts, arranging the travel, the busses, the flights—

—you should see their faces—

—a girl’s got to applaud a girl’s ingenuity—

—we all find secret ways to play—

—create our own prisons, earn our own parole, run and run—

—except us—

—Ruthie and me—

—we just sit around her kitchen table, drinking cheap red wine, smoking Lucky Strikes to lose a couple pounds, talking till one in the morning about—

—of course about men—

—about where we want to be in five years and why we won’t get there and how come only other people’s lives seem to make any kind of sense—

—because it was Ruthie’s passion for beauty parlors, their glossy rituals, that brought us together, imagine that—

—isn’t it—

—funny, the luxury of somebody lathering your hair for you, such a big deal—

—how you all of a sudden become the princess of everything—

—that indulgence of sitting under the dryer reading Vogue until you get bored and then basking in the application of your mascara, nothing more, not a thing, just that, the feeling of—

—which somehow sets better in the heat, the mascara, who knows why—

—zero to do on a weekend afternoon save lounge around like that—

—and me working as the receptionist and manicurist—

—we hitting it off right away, Ruthie and me, because we knew we were sisters, family, and family never—

—you make your own, don’t you, of course you do, the universe gives you one family and you spend your life making another, the version you really wanted all along—

—your own family in the end unfailingly proving a disappointment in countless ways—

—a something that went wrong at some point you never noticed until you look back and see what a bunch of smashed plates yours is—

—so you share some strands of DNA with somebody else—

—big deal—

—me still living in Washington Heights with my fretful mother—

—she who kvetches to the ceiling at dinnertime, all nerves and disillusionment in the face of the future—

—the past—

—the present—

—a little alarmed bunny rabbit, that’s her, convinced any minute the sky will fall and she will die a beggar sorting through trash cans in some alley in Hoboken, her children having abandoned her to the elements and her recollections—

—on the passage walls hang photographs of her defeats—

—my bully brother with the prolific-toothed smirk, eyes clear and cold and amber as a goat’s—

—how he used to steal my allowance and spend it on root beer Dum Dums because the putz knew I’d never—

—how do any of us survive childhood?—

—he shoved me under the covers, refused to let me out for air, the crush, the fear, the scrabble, like your apartment building caving in on you—

—we had some good times, too—

—I’m sure of it—

—even if I can’t recall—

—surely we once rode the Cyclone in Palisades Amusement Park side by side one Saturday afternoon, enduring each other—

—and Ruthie coming all the way from Newark because once when she was seven she read a biography of Beethoven, one of those written for kids, and on the spot decided she wanted to live an artist’s life in the big city—

—the only place you can do that unless you go to Paris, she said—

—and we both Jews, her grandparents from eastern Europe, me from Germany, that’s where I was, both of us growing up fatherless—

—hers sneaking away from the mess of his existence when she was a little girl, mine never making it out of the war, Berlin, the war—

—which is how we figured one night over a bottle of cheap red wine and pack of Lucky Strikes that that was probably why we both had a thing for older men—

—Freud never leaving any of us alone for long—

—me describing to her in detail my boss, Nicky, Nicky Nigito, what we had going—

—sweet Nicky of the five o’clock shadow at eleven in the morning, Italian biceps, knock-you-over-with-a-feather Old Spice—

—those fancy suits—

—oh my goodness—

—so what if he’s married with two little brats and this beautiful wife named whatever she’s named, Nancy, Nicky and Nancy, that’s, yes, who if the truth be known is a very nice person—

—you only get one life—

—use it like hell—

—which is hard to admit about the wife of the man you’re dating, but it’s true, she is, and we get along well, even if Nicky is the only real reason I keep coming into work—

—me having had no way to picture how sad a pencil lying by itself on a desktop could be—

—stack of manilla folders beside it—

—the dread of chipped red fingernail polish on a silk-stockinged woman’s pinkie—

—sleepless night-hornets, that’s what I—

—tedium that expands in your head till you can actually feel it pushing against your brain like some damaging animal—

—you can sense your mind withering—

—only you want to so badly—

— a few thousand cells every hour—

—how easily your life can be duplicated, is the thing, that’s what you—

—how easily you can be dead even with your eyes open—

—I don’t think I ever expected better from this world, but I don’t think I ever expected this, either—

—can you hurry up with that, Edith, can you step on it a little, sugar—

—that sham politeness you apply every morning along with your lipstick and rouge—

—or the cranky anorexic in a bleached Angie Dickinson bouffant with poodle strung out on bennies squirming under her arm—

—rat-dog’s black lips pulled back in wrath at you—

—mouthful of needle-teeth six inches from your face—

—that cranky anorexic proving who’s in charge, just for kicks, like that isn’t clear—

—like it doesn’t kill you a little more every day—

—just because her own life is so whatever it is—

—well-off—

—splintered into a thousand pieces—

—because Jackson isn’t slowing down, he’s speeding up, you can, the skinfizz, the wind, how it—

—me squinting against what’s to come, squinting and giggling, this new world I am, every me—

—we don’t like it, all the people I’m not—

—and so night after night Ruthie and I sitting at that kitchen table—

—headlights all at once flicking off—

—road going dark before us—

—Jackson, what are you doing, baby?—

—night after night ventilating about how much more exciting it is to be courted by an older man—

—anybody who’s tried it understands—

—how they’ve lived to a volume you can’t even—

—more charming, tender, smarter, sexier, wiser, too—

—more cultivated and appreciative of you than those snot-nosed little shits in their twenties, pardon my French—

—can’t even afford to treat you to a coffee and date-nut-bread sandwich at Chock full o’Nuts—

—jeez oh man—

—telling Ruthie all about how Nicky takes me out to classy restaurants—

—everybody knows his name, yes, Mr. Nigito, by all means, Mr. Nigito—

—classical concerts—

—ballet—

—ballet—

—me, Edith Metzger from, imagine—

—we talk about the books I’m reading because he’s reading them, too—

—generous, caring, funny, smart, adorable Nicky—

—the feel of him beside me in the hotel room bed—

—his skin—

—those muscles—

—if he gets into an argument with somebody he never needs to raise his voice because he can level a guy with a couple words—

—you’re the reason shampoo comes with instructions, isn’t it?, like that, such a, how can you not—

—sometimes I have second thoughts, sure I do, who doesn’t—

—we’re only—

—who isn’t?—

—the specialness sometimes souring, curling up around the edges like an old paperback, it’s just the way it—

—sometimes Nicky demanding too much—

—wanting my life to fit into his like a—

—but Ruthie, she can massage my worries away, remind me in that way she has how cute I am, petite, my pretty blue eyes, full lips, feathered black hair—

—how lucky any man—

—family—

—don’t waste it, sweetie, she saying—

—she saying love, no matter what the terms, no matter how differently you define it from everybody else—

—it has its ups and downs, sure, look at Jackson and me, but you know in your bones it’s its own reward—

—who cares what anybody else, how other people, that’s their business, this is yours—

—so let it go, Edith, seriously, just let it go, for once in your—

—make your desires into something you can flourish inside of because listen, honey, this is the fifties, we’re all writing our own screenplays now—

—my adopted sister, that’s—

—Ruthie wrote her own screenplay in spades, surfacing from the Lincoln Tunnel, this twenty-six-year-old wide-eyed kid from Jersey—

—second afternoon in New York—

—she blusters into the first uptown gallery she stumbles across, right up to the first person she saw, who happens to be Audrey Flack, Audrey Flack, what are the—

—who just happens to be browsing, Audrey, and Ruthie goes excuse me, I think you might be able to help me, who are the best artists in the city right now, who should I know, in what order, would you say?—

—without missing a beat Audrey answering Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, like that, they hang out at the Cedar Bar … you know it?—

—and Ruthie: Can you draw me a map? and Audrey does, actually takes the time to—

—and Ruthie: thanks so much—oh, and one more thing—if I’m not, you know—where does he usually sit, Pollock, when he’s there?—

—and there she is on the corner of University Place and Eighth Street like she owns the joint—

—you’ve got to—

—stepping through the door into this crowded dive, she telling me, pea-soup green walls, cigarette haze, pong of urine seeping in from the toilet at the back—

—people huddled four deep at a long glossy bar, poor-casual, coarse, loud, wild—

—and there I am ordering myself the cheapest whiskey, daydreaming in a booth, maybe an hour, who knows, only out of the blue the entire atmosphere around me changing—

—because there’s Jackson thundering in, tired, ruined, shredded by life, pausing to look around, take us all in—

—shorter than I’d imagined him, thickset, rumpled tweed jacket, no tie, wrinkled polo shirt, balding, forehead old and furrowed, beard stubbly, and yet—

—and yet the most irresistible blue eyes, I could see them from, indescribable, like yours, sweetie, just like yours, I could see them all the way from—

—you should have felt the energy he was giving off, phenomenal, just phenomenal—

—this unbelievable aura, everyone in the place could sense it coursing through them—

—a continuous low-grade electrical current—

—this reverence suffusing the air—

—premonition something important was about to—

—you know what I—

—and next there he is standing right in front of me, offering me a drink, G&T, I couldn’t, you’re new around here, aren’t you, him saying, like we’d already been introduced, like we’d already known each other years—

—because I haven’t seen you before, he saying, tell me something interesting about yourself, sliding into the seat across from me, nothing about art, okay, not a fucking word about that crap, just tell me something nobody else in New York knows about you—

—like we understand each other immediately, that cliché, I know it’s crazy, I know, I’m not stupid, I know it’s just movies, like that, but it’s not, too, if you know what I—

—all I wanted to do was tell him—what—what did I want to tell him—

—that I got his sadness—

—I’m sad in the same way—

—because it has something to do with being stuck in one body that can only occupy one place at a time—

—how our mothers’ smiles were lies—

—seeing how things have turned out in your life but being unable to reach back to your younger self and explain what’s going to—

—brace yourself, honey, get ready for—

—yearning to protect someone like him from the disaster called himself—

—I can see how your flesh is gone—

—flayed off—

—because I know something, baby, I know you have a life vivid and complex and injured as anyone’s and all I have to do is figure out the language to let you know I get that—

—the art business has eaten you—

—other people have undone you—

—and you’ve ruined yourself, look at, you threw yourself out of the plane simply to see what falling felt like—

—I’m not looking into his eyes anymore but studying his rough hands—

—fingers bloated from drinking, stained yellowbrown from chain smoking—

—how he speaks with them instead of his voice—

—these exquisite ugly birds rising up around his mouth—

—half-sentences—

—approximations—

—like he’s too self-conscious to finish a thought—

—like English is his third language—

—all you want to—

—he isn’t handsome, Jackson, no, not at all, don’t get me wrong, sweetie, I’m not saying that, he’s something else—

—what’s the word—

—compelling—

—that’s what he, vital, overpowering, this walking fire alarm, this ambulance existence—

—and when he smiles this sorrowful aging man turns into a sweet little boy—

—next thing he’s across from me in the booth holding both my hands in his, palms up, examining them like some fortuneteller—

—I’m telling him about a painting of his I saw a few years ago, the first I’d ever come across, some gallery, I forget the name, the title, but the dynamism, how can you—

—I could feel it enter my body—

—that’s what I—

—studying the canvas made me get how his heart was in this continual process of coming apart—

—I—

—which is when he interrupted saying no fucking art, please, Jesus, I’ve had enough—

—critics calling him Jack the Dripper like he’s a joke—

—something you can look smart making fun of—

—an hour and we’re standing alone in my bedroom, everything silent and dark, Sandy out for the night to a, Jackson kissing me, shy as a child, like he doesn’t know exactly how to do it, like he’s never done it before—

—reeking of dead alcohol and cigarettes—

—kissing me like he can’t believe I could want somebody like him—

—every blink of us a new planet—

—which is when something comes over him, the alcohol, the hope, and we tumble into each other—

—become someone other than the people we had been three minutes before—

—on the other side of our skin this new plane widening—

—and when I open my eyes again he’s sleeping with me in my disarrayed bed, fetal, backed against me, snoring, my arms around his thick waist, that’s—

—me thinking I’m snuggled tight against the devil himself—

—a fool and a madman and a cowboy and a saint—

—I have absolutely no idea who I’m holding—

—it’s—

—it’s Thursday evening and I’m on the phone with Ruthie and next it’s early Saturday morning, today, and we’re on the train together to Long Island, she already exhausted by what awaits her—

—forehead pressed against window—

—wishing a nap upon herself—

—me reading that new Pearl S. Buck novel about the last empress of China, it’s hard to, it goes on and on, all those paragraphs, that grayness, but everyone’s talking about it, so I—

—it’s the new Pearl S. Buck novel and then it’s Ruthie and me stepping down off the train into this staggering blue day at that cute East Hampton depot, red brick, green trim—

—me holding my suitcase, a few changes of summer clothes, my swimsuit, makeup, hairbrush, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, perfume—

—the Oldsmobile already in the parking lot, top down, engine idling, Jackson in the process of climbing out to fetch our bags—

—this smoke of grogginess surrounding him—

—like he fought his way up from bed ten minutes ago—

—disheveled, sullen, face spoiled by loneliness—

—shuffling toward us expressionless—

—what’s the word—

—empty—

—Jackson empty—

—Ruthie and him exchanging kisses like it’s some kind of chronic duty—

—and when she tries introducing me to him all he does is grunt—

—won’t meet my eyes—

—me holding out my hand to shake his and him shuffling right by, aiming for the car, carrying our bags and his pointlessness—

—throwing the suitcases in the trunk—

—slamming it down—

—which is when it hits me that Ruthie never told him I’d be coming along, that’s what, she’s springing me on him like some kind of gag gift, I didn’t—

—I’ve been expecting some big-deal artist, who wouldn’t, in spite of what she—

—suave, masculine, some pure embodiment of intuitive genius, because the newspapers, because Ruthie’s passion—

—only all I meet is her embarrassment—

—she’s worked so hard to look fresh for him, peppy, merry, this lovely white summer dress speckled with rosebuds—

—and there we are already having run out of anything to say to each other—

—the three of us squeezing into the front seat, me pressed against the passenger door, armrest jabbing my elbow, Ruthie leaning against Jackson, counterfeiting things—

—he lights up and I’m embarrassed for her embarrassment because the sunshine has turned repulsive above us—

—a dreadful lemon sky—

—only she refuses to drop her smile, devotes her whole being to plowing on with her feigned good cheer, it’s—

—I mean—

—Ruthie and I—

—we assume we’re on our way to the farmhouse—

—that was the plan, we all knew that was the plan, though as soon as he can Jackson pulls off the road and into the parking lot of some crummy redbrick bar—

—Cavagnaro’s—

—only eleven in the morning—

—eleven—

—Ruthie and I all nicely dressed, just in from the city, Jackson deliberately baiting her, trying to mortify me, except I’m not here for him—

—everybody needs to know when she reaches out—

—it’s family—

—that’s just what you—

—Ruthie going, why are we stopping, honey, I thought we were—

—and him cutting her off: there’s nothing to drink at home, I want a drink, why should that be such a big—

—the second you walk in you can smell this is where the defeated go, the ones who don’t own the fancy homes around here but work for those who do—

—the pool cleaners, the lobster fisherman, the drivers, the maids, the handymen who never seem able to locate enough work to make ends meet—

—gloom the sole lighting—

—mildew and discouragement—

—she choosing a booth awa