After the Stroke (23 page)

I must describe the horrors of two nights in a glitzy hotel. I arrived at eleven—it had been arranged that I could check in early. A huge empty lounge. The woman at the registration desk did not say “Welcome” or anything remotely like that, but demanded that I give her my American Express card to copy in case not everything would be paid for. She did not say, “Enjoy your stay.” In fact the atmosphere was frigid.

On the way up I told the nice luggage man that first impressions were all important in the hotel business as in any other. If people do not feel welcome they will not come back. I would not come back, I told him.

The suite was very cold, though well-designed. A round table with four straight chairs on one side of the living room, with a bar counter behind it, and a tiny bedroom with a double bed in it, and a television set and that's about all. I found it claustrophobic if I closed the shuttered door.

No flowers. During those two days I missed flowers and silence terribly—and Pierrot.

I had noticed men working in the hall and they made a lot of noise hammering and papering all morning.

At twelve the phone rang and it was Janine to say Marian Christy from the
Globe
was here and could they come up. Janine is P.R. for the Unitarian Universalist Association—which was launching a new magazine the
World
and honoring me at a reception on Tuesday and had set up the interviews. The front desk called to ask if I had an appointment with Janine. I realized why when she came up with Marian Christy from the
Globe.
Janine is black, a charming, sensitive young woman. I was furious. She had called me a few moments before herself to be sure it was all right to come up. The racism upset me.

I don't want to talk about the interview which was deliberately challenging, an adversary interview. Christy had not read anything of mine. Her questions were obtuse and domineering. A bad combination.

Finally at around one-thirty, exhausted and starving, I ordered a Martini, oysters and a glass of milk sent up—and prepared, after I had eaten, to lie down and sleep if possible.

At two-thirty a sharp knock on the door roused me from a doze and when I opened it a man was there “to put in a new sink.” Mind-boggling. Was I so crazy that I had washed my hands without a sink? It turned out to be a round gold sink on the bar counter. It was soon done. A few minutes later I heard someone creeping around in my living room. I got up and found a bowl of fruit, cheese and crackers from the management. It would have been great to find them there earlier when I was starving.

At some point, I guess before the interview, I realized that the suite was icy cold. I called housekeeping and a half hour later a man came with a blanket and discovered the heat was turned off! By three it was very hot and I turned it off

I must admit that once it was dark things warmed up—and the view was pleasing from the tenth floor, with a small piece of the river and a lovely sky to be seen between buildings. The hotel is built around a square, centered still now by a huge lighted Christmas tree.

Thursday, January 15

I finally did get some rest and at five Janine brought Rosemary Bray from
Ms
for an hour's interview. Bray is a heart-warming, sensitive, highly intelligent black woman. The atmosphere was supportive. She had read me, discovered
Journal of a Solitude
last summer and went on from there. We had an immediate bond as she was a scholarship student at the Parker School in Chicago where Katherine Taylor taught before she was called to be head of Shady Hill. From there Bray went to Yale. Our rapport was instant and the interview was a pleasure.

Poor Dorothy Wallace had a twenty-four hour virus and could not have dinner with me, a real blow as I long to see her. I had dinner sent up.

Tuesday was a killer and I am not going to say more than that a five to seven reception in my honor at the Unitarian Universalist Association on Beacon Street and dinner afterward nearly finished me.

But the saving grace was the drive from Cambridge to Beacon Street with a charming Unitarian minister. There was a full moon, the “wolf” moon, and all my nostalgia for Cambridge and Boston came back as we drove along the river, looking out on all the lighted buildings, across the river, and even criss-crossed the Hill to avoid the worst of the traffic. It is magical still at night, especially since the old-fashioned gas lamps—now electric of course—have been installed.

The brilliant scene was my reward and I was happy and relieved to go to bed at last around nine. At ten I was half-asleep when a sharp knock came at my door, then another. I got up, rather scared, and was terrified when I heard a key in the lock and the door being opened. I shouted, “Go away.” A man's voice said, “Sorry,” and the door closed. I ran to the phone, pressed the emergency button and said, “Someone is trying to get into my room.” “We'll send Security up,” said the cool front desk woman. It took fifteen minutes. I could hear people conferring in the hall. Finally a knock. I opened to three men: a young blond in work clothes; the security guard, a black; and an assistant manager. They explained the front desk had sent the engineer up to check the suites. They had not bothered to find out I was in one of them! I was furious. It was then after ten and suddenly the exhaustion of the day and a bad fright brought on hysterical tears. I called the front desk and asked them to send a nurse or doctor who could give me a sedative. They did not apologize for what had happened!

Fifteen minutes later the manager and security came again to explain they would send for an ambulance. No doctor could be reached. It was becoming really hilarious, like a Lily Tomlin show. I said, “No, the last thing I need is an ambulance, but maybe you could bring me some hot milk and brandy.” In a half hour they brought it and explained also how to double-lock the door. But I couldn't do that because if I had heart failure no one could get in!

Then I finally went to bed. A half hour later, another knock—the engineer. He thought the other two would be found with me! Incredible!

So that is life in a glitzy hotel. Lord, deliver us. I kept thinking of the Ritz and the Algonquin, shabby, comfortable, with beautiful antique furniture in every room.

I found a wonderful quote in
Newsweek
from Lily Tomlin's show, in a column by George Wills, curiously enough:

A bag lady is speaking: “I made some studies, and reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it. I can take it in small doses, but as a lifestyle I found it too confining.”

And now off to the vet with Pierrot to get his nails clipped.

Friday, January 16

How I enjoy the daily drive to town! Every morning after three hours at my desk I set out, feeling like a truant from school. The road out is perilous these days because deep ruts of snow froze and have not melted even after a couple of days of thaw, but I look at the trees and the squirrels darting across the road, and the black shining of the brook that crosses under it at one point—where marsh marigolds grow in the spring. It is altogether a black-and-white landscape in the winter woods.

What I wait for eagerly is crossing the causeway and bridge into York, and looking for the flock of two exotic geese and three ducks who seem to be a family and are always together. Today they were swimming quite far off on the high tide. And the charming small buffleheads were diving nearby, such stout black and white fellows.

I complain about the mail and all it demands but it is always exciting to open the big box at the post office and see what is there. Today Doris Grumbach's
The Magician's Girl
which I shall start tonight, and a marvelous plush-covered hot water bottle from Maggie. I rested with it on my stomach—how comforting. The mail itself brought news that Sister Jean has survived major surgery. I'm glad that I sent flowers yesterday. She says
Journal of a Solitude
has helped her through the long wait. A dear letter from Blue Jenkins in Greenfield, happy because they have a woman minister and Blue was delighted by her first meeting with her. I felt quite lifted up. Three or four brief notes of praise about my work. I steel myself these days not to answer.

Today, because my desk is at last a little less of a chaos, I can rejoice in the rich life I live, in all that comes to me, instead of feeling like a camel on whom heavier and heavier loads are placed as she plods through the desert.

Last night I heard three times the strange melodious hoot of a mating owl. How can any female owl resist him?

Then, at six, early dawn, Venus was again brilliant in the orange sky. Again I looked down on the snow-covered lawn and saw how much life came and went across it that night. When Tamas was alive he never barked. Was he unaware? But the other evening the United Parcel man was gasping when I opened the porch door, “A deer just rose up in front of me,” he explained, as though he had seen a ghost.

Sunday, January 18

It is snowing hard and I feel sleepy and succeeded only in clearing off a part of my desk—letters thrown away that have been here for months. A little respite from pressure—in fact a holiday.

Yesterday Nancy and I went to a movie for the first time in six months,
Crimes of the Heart
, and as we always do, to Luka's, the Greek restaurant in Portsmouth, for dinner afterwards.

Crimes of the Heart
is the most beautifully photographed and directed movie I have seen in a long time. Extreme sensitivity to interior light, the light on the faces of the three famous actresses who play the sisters. I was a little disappointed in the text, written by the author of the play which was on Broadway last year. Nancy and I had the same chauvinistic reaction of being glad we are not Southern born and bred! Oh dear. The clamor of voices for one thing, like sharp bird voices, put me on edge. It made me long for Chekhov, for something subtler, less obviously dramatic—but in these days no doubt there would be no audience if it were Chekhov.

Wednesday, January 21

Where has time gone? I feel I have been riding white water, Time a wild river over rocks. We have had another big storm, this one shedding four or five inches of fluffy light snow. So there are mountains of it piled up by the plow. It was two below zero at Nancy's this morning, she tells me, and must have been about that here. So Pierrot is not only an aesthetic pleasure, but very useful at my feet as a hot water bottle.

The cold and the excitement of these storms made me feel rather tired. Will the car start?

These last nights I have read Doris Grumbach's
The Magician's Girl.
A fascinating, puzzling novel which is ostensibly the story of three Barnard students in college and for years afterward, “the usual thing” one might think, but it seems to be really about monsters, why they fascinate. One of the women, Liz, is based on Arbus obviously. Minna is somewhat autobiographical, I gather, and through her New York City in the thirties is charmingly evoked. The third, Maud, whose strange self dominates the book, is a very ugly, very fat poet, a genius the reader gathers. Her passion appears to be words, not feelings or ideas, an interesting conception of the poet which did not really convince me—nor did her suicide. The last section of the book is Minna's teaching at the University of Iowa at sixty, falling in love with a young student called Lowell. Shades of Colette! I found this more convincing and more moving than anything else in the book. I think it is the most original of Grumbach's novels.

I presume that most novelists draw their characters up from the subconscious, not often as portraits of real people, though that does happen, but emerging from the subconscious where the seeds have been sown and then are fertilized and rise to the surface. Grumbach almost always uses famous, real people whom she has not known personally: MacDowell, the ladies of Llangollen, Marilyn Monroe and now Arbus. It is these mythical “real” famous people who fertilize her imagination. I find this strange. Feeding on an aura as it were.

Doris Grumbach is a very physical author. It is sexuality rather than sensuality which pervades her work and in this she differs from Colette. She handles it with great skill in the love affair between Minna and Lowell. The image of Minna at sixty as Lowell sees her as a peony fully open stays with me.

Brad Daziel comes for lunch to discuss his dream of putting together a “portable” Sarton. The preface will be his long essay
(Puckerbrush Review
, VII, 2) on my correspondents—a really splendid job.

Friday, January 23

Yesterday a somber, dark sky and the suspense before a big storm. As often happens, it was not as bad, here anyway, as expected, but the very high wind all night was nerve wracking. I expected the electric lights to go off and had candles and pails of water ready as when that happens everything stops: heat, light, pump for water, etc. Pierrot became wildly excited by the wind, once playing with a belt-end hung over a chair. He leaped into the air like a ballet dancer and did a pirouette. It was adorable.

A small incident at the hairdresser's has given me something to try to understand. I was there for a permanent. While Donna was securing my hair into curlers, an old lady who was waiting to be picked up came and stood beside us and talked cheerfully about herself and her daughters, and Donna responded. It was as though I did not exist, was an animal being groomed. And finally I said gently, “I'm a human being. I come here to rest.” So the old lady said, “Oh!” and moved away. Donna apologized but in a tone of voice that told me she was angry. She went on working in dead silence. Then I suggested that maybe the way to handle it might be to introduce me to the other client. She apologized again. Then Chuck, the owner, said sharply, “Don't apologize, Donna, for what is not your fault.”

So I felt like a criminal, a misbehaving child. I felt tears coming and bent my head far down, farther and farther, to hide myself away. I hunched my shoulders, trying to become as small as possible—feeling, I suppose, like a turtle, but I have no shell. Tears flowed down my cheeks. I wanted to run away but in the middle of a permanent that was not possible.