Sea Lovers (24 page)

Isabel had said coming to Rome was like coming home, and Edith had to take her word for it, because she had not ever had that sensation in her life and she doubted that she ever would. It was too late now to find a home to go back to. She pictured herself lying flat on her back on the floor of a leaky rowboat, above her face the blue sky, and all around water, water, to the end of the world. In the distance she heard a door open, which she registered unconsciously as the door of the lecture room. Then there was the sound of rapid footsteps coming toward her. The lizard heard it too, scurried across the sill, disappeared into the vine. Edith abandoned her reverie and turned from the window to see Isabel approaching, moving swiftly with the dancer's powerful, slightly duck-footed gait. She was exhausted, Edith observed. Her eyelids were still swollen from last night's tears, and there were dark circles beneath them. She'd pulled her hair back tightly and made a schoolmarmish bun at the nape. She hadn't neglected the lipstick, which was bright red, but it served only to outline the downward cast of her mouth.

The ugly business at the college had shaken Isabel, Edith understood. She was wounded by it in some vital center of her confidence. It was her way to dismiss what she couldn't control, and put the best possible face on every failure, and that was what she was doing now, but it was hard, she was having a hard time of it. She came to the doorway and leaned against the frame, giving Edith the wan smile of a comrade in arms. “Are you ready?” she asked.

Gina had all the symptoms: sleep disturbances, hot flashes, irritability, weight gain, loss of libido, aching joints, and heart palpitations. The one she complained of most was hot flashes, which she dealt with by throwing off her clothes and cursing. As far as Evan was concerned, her irritability was the worst symptom; she was increasingly difficult to get along with. Churlish, he told her. Her lack of interest in sex was possibly more frustrating, though he admitted to himself that he found her less desirable because she was so uncivil, so he didn't suffer unduly from wanting her and being rejected. When they did make love, it was a wrestling match, which Evan enjoyed well enough. They had never been much for tender embraces.

Her work was changing, too; it was getting darker. As he stood looking at an engraving of trees, of a dark forest, he wondered how it could all seem so clear when it was almost entirely black. She was working all the time, well into the nights, because she couldn't sleep. Often enough he found her in the mornings curled up under a lap rug on the cot in her cluttered, inky little studio with the windows open and the chill early morning light pouring in.

She wasn't taking care of herself properly, not eating enough, not washing enough; she hardly took any exercise at all. Sometimes she lay around the living room all day, napping or reading magazines, getting up now and then to rummage around in her studio, then back to the couch, where she left ink stains on the upholstery. There were dust balls under the beds and in the corners of the rooms, dishes always stacked in the sink.

“It's driving me crazy,” Evan complained. “Can't we get someone in to clean this place, since you can't keep up with it?”

She gave him a cold, reproachful glare over her magazine. “I can keep up with it,” she said. “I just don't keep up with it.”

“Well, then, hire someone who will.”

“You hire someone,” she replied. “Since it bothers you so much.”

Evan turned away. He did all the cooking as it was. How could he possibly take on the cleaning as well? And he had no idea how to hire someone. He went to the kitchen and threw open the refrigerator. “And what are we going to eat for dinner?” he shouted to her. “This refrigerator is practically empty.”

“We'll go out,” she shouted back.

They went out. She was in a good mood for a change. They laughed, drank too much wine, walked back through the city streets with their arms locked around each other, made love on the living room floor. Evan went to bed, but she wouldn't go with him. She went to her studio, and twice when he woke in the night, he saw that the light was still on.

The next day she was a harridan again, peevish and distracted. His own work was going poorly; he had taken on too much and had two deadlines he didn't think he could make. When he complained to her, she shrugged. “Then don't make them,” she said. “Tell the editor you can't do it.”

“Right,” he said. “And then she never calls on me again. I need the work.”

“You always say that,” she snapped. “And you always have more work than you can do. So obviously you don't need it.”

Evan followed her out of the room into her studio. “I don't always have more than I can do. Sometimes I don't have any. It's feast or famine in this business, as you well know.”

Gina yawned, put her hands on her hips, and stretched, making an agonized face at him. “Jesus, my back hurts,” she said.

“It's freezing in here,” he said, moving toward the open window. “Why don't you close this?”

But before he could reach it she blocked his path. “Don't close the window,” she said angrily.

“Ugh,” Evan said. “What is that?” For on the windowsill were the remains of some animal. Evan pushed past his wife to get a closer look. It was the back half of a mouse, tail, feet, gory innards.

“Where did this come from?” he said.

“The cat must have left it.” She turned away, bending over a partially engraved plate.

“We don't have a cat.”

All at once she was angry, as if he'd done something annoying. “The neighbor's cat,” she sputtered. “Would you just leave it? I'll take care of it.”

“It's disgusting,” he said. He looked around the room at the half-empty coffee cups, the dishes with crumbs and bits of old sandwiches or dried cottage cheese stuck to them, the confusion of ink and paper, copper plates, presses, the disorder of the bottles of acids and resins, the writing desk overflowing with unanswered mail, bills, and photographs. “This whole room is disgusting,” he concluded. “How can you find anything in here?”

To which she replied, “Who asked you to come in here? Will you get out of here?” And she pushed him out the door.

They were invited to a dinner party. Gina was in her studio until it was almost time to leave. Then she came out, washed her hands, combed her hair, threw on a skirt, and said she was ready. Evan had showered, shaved, dressed carefully, even polished his shoes. He looked at her skeptically. “That's it?” he said. “You're ready?”

“Why not?” she said.

No jewelry, he thought. No makeup, no perfume. There had been a time when it took her at least an hour to dress for a party.

The party went well, it was easy conversation, good wine, old friends, until a couple Gina and Evan had not seen for some time arrived. Evan spotted the woman, Vicky, first, smiled and waved as he caught her eye. Something was different about her, he thought, but he couldn't be sure. She looked great, very bright, very intense. Her blouse had flecks of gold in it; she was sparkling. Gina, standing next to him, laughing at something their host was saying, turned and saw the woman too. “Oh my God,” she said softly. Vicky moved slowly toward them, smiling.

Seeing Gina's drop-jawed amazement, the host said confidentially, “She's been done.” Evan sent him an inquiring look, to which he responded by tapping his lower jaw with the backs of his fingers.

Vicky had stopped to speak to someone else. Evan watched her, though he tried not to stare. In a distant, agreeable way he had always admired her. The last time he had seen her, several months ago, he had observed that her delicate beauty was fading. Now she looked good, he thought. She'd changed her hair too, probably to disguise the more surprising change in her face. They'd done a good job on her. Perhaps her mouth was a little stretched at the corners, and of course the flesh around her chin looked tight. She broke away from her conversation and continued toward Gina and Evan.

“Vicky, how are you?” Evan said, catching her outstretched hand in his own, as if he were retrieving her, he thought, or pulling her out of a fish tank. “It's good to see you.”

He was aware of Gina at his side, of her steady, even breathing, but he didn't see her face until it was too late. “Have you lost your mind?” she said sharply to Vicky. “Why would you do something like that? You look awful.”

Vicky missed a beat to astonishment and another to dismay, but that was all. “I may have lost my mind,” she said, “but you seem to have lost your manners.”

Evan turned on his wife. He was so angry he wanted to slap her. “For God's sake, Gina,” he said. “Are you drunk?”

Gina blinked her eyes rapidly, ignoring him. She was concentrated on Vicky, who was easing herself away. “So you count on people not to say anything. Do you tell yourself they don't notice?”

“Excuse me,” Vicky said, disappearing into the crowd.

“It's ridiculous,” Gina continued. “She looked perfectly fine before. Now she looks like something from television, like a talk show host.”

“I think we'd better go,” Evan said, trying to take her arm, but she shook him off.

“Will you calm down,” she said.

So they stayed and the rest of the evening passed uneventfully, but Evan was miserable and felt humiliated. At dinner they were seated as far from Vicky and her husband as possible, probably at her request, Evan thought. Vicky was the center of attention; Evan could hear her tinkling laugh but couldn't bring himself to look her way. Gina leaned out past him now and then to shoot a disapproving look toward the offending jawline, but she said nothing more about it, and once she got into a conversation with her neighbor, which Evan joined, she seemed to forget the unpleasant incident. They talked about publishing—the neighbor was also a journalist—and then about travel. Gina told a funny story about a hotel they had stayed in on a Greek island, and Evan, though he had heard this story before, though he had actually been there when the porter threw Gina's suitcase out the window, found himself laughing as heartily as their friend. He applied himself to his wine and resolved to forgive his wife.

Evan noticed the book a few times before he actually picked it up to look at it. He'd seen it on the table in the living room, half buried in a pile of magazines, and on the kitchen table, and once on the nightstand next to their bed. A woman's book about women, he thought, about all the trials of their biology and psychology, the special wonderfulness of it all and the failure of men to comprehend any of it, though it was going on right under their noses. Women lapped this stuff up like cream, even intelligent women like Gina, which was what really made it annoying. Here was the book again, jammed between the cushions of the couch with a pencil stuck in it to mark the page. He pulled it out and opened it to the page with the pencil. The chapter was titled “No Longer a Woman,” and it told all about the biological changes attendant on menopause: the shrinking of the uterus, the drying out of vaginal tissue, the atrophy of the ovaries, the steady depletion of estrogen.

Pretty dry reading, Evan thought with a sardonic chuckle. He put the book back where he had found it and wandered off to his desk, where his article was not taking shape. No longer a woman, he thought. But if not a woman, then what? It was ridiculous. When was a woman ever not a woman? All the symptoms Gina complained of only proved she was a woman, and a susceptible one at that, which was part of being a woman too. An old woman was still a woman, still behaved as she always had, only more so. Evan thought of his grandmother. Not an old woman but an old lady. She wore violet perfume—he could still remember it—and was fond of a certain candy, a puffy, spongy, fruit-flavored ball that came in tins; he hadn't seen any in years. She was small, bent, arthritic, but industrious to the end. She did a little gardening on the last day of her life. She had survived her husband by twenty years. Perfectly nice, perfectly sexless. Serene, agreeable. Everyone loved her.

Though he remembered that once, when he was praising this wonderful woman to his mother, she had commented drily, “Yes, she's very nice now. But she wasn't always.”