Trompe l'Oeil (11 page)

NORA'S COLLECTION

It began haphazardly and remained on the cheap, the color values erratic. In high school, Nora kept a few of Meg's reprinted
Annunciations
; in college, she taped postcards and museum sale posters to the cinder-block walls, reproductions she imitated in her own first paintings. When she first lived with James, she'd save exhibit postcards friends mailed from abroad, or pick them up at local shows, or cut pages from old books or magazines. The Dutch, the Italians, a handful of the French, stored in shoe boxes she'd cover in colored gift-wrap. Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Ruisdael, Da Vinci, Bernini. La Tour, Matisse, Vuillard. The Magdalens she'd call “sad Marys.” The backs of many remained blank, as if waiting for inscription, though some had vacationers' scribbled messages, dates and stamped locations. On the dresser of the bedroom she shared with James in Blue Rock, Nora kept two small frames in which she displayed favorites; on the wall beside the north window hung a corkboard on which she posted others, changing them according to mood.

Rarely, she'd hang a portrait—say, a Vermeer—in the kitchen, above the girls' semi-fauvist paintings and drawings
of flying kids and orange swans, or tiny boats skimming over the blue outline of a hand. Her drawings from school she kept in a thin brown portfolio in her closet. In a happier moment, two of her paintings—the ones Theo kept—hung in the upper hallway at Blue Rock. A pink-toned Vuillard-influenced interior, and a portrait of Nora's mother reading.

ANOTHER SUMMER

She dreamed of driving in the rain in what seemed to be Paris, though she was driving a station wagon. It was an uncomplicated plot: she needed to get home before the school bus carrying Theo and Katy; she needed to pick up Molly from the babysitter. She was running late—why was she running late? She'd been visiting her other life, a friend, a museum, something that James and the children had no part in. And now she was driving, and though brick buildings and green parks flashed by, she seemed to be driving in place.

How transparent, her dreams, but recognizing their transparency did not prevent their repetition or the accompanying anxiety, or alter her waking life. Of course, in this dream Molly lived, and waited at the babysitter's (though where were Sara and Delia?), and for a moment after Nora awoke, Molly still waited, and then the dream gave way. Wind gusts whipped the side of the house, and when they subsided she could hear the little girls in their room, Delia chatting then calling for her.

She did not speak to James about these dreams, believing he'd be irritated by their repetition or by her dream portraits of him: he was never there to pick up the children, never there to collect
Molly from the babysitter's (though in truth, he devoted weekends to the family). But the days and weeks accumulated when they'd forgo not only talk about dreams, but anything beyond the tasks of the day, both of them in rigid traces. Some days Nora had no chance to shower, others no chance to eat. Often, James returned at eight, exhausted. Small daily affections, ordinary endearments—at first with subtexts of a promised
later
—took a perfunctory spin as the fatigue accumulated, the space between them widening. On bad days, “sweetheart” meant
What now?
or
Again?
or
No
. Not the first marriage sustained by etiquette, but after a while, you begin to lose track. Some days, James appeared to her as dreamless and drone-like, if also—and unjustly—impatient. Her weeks seemed a cast-iron box containing the house and children, which she hoisted and carried without respite, few moments to acknowledge she was lonely.

Yet this: the salt breeze, the taste of salt breeze. Always she took solace from the shore—even returning from the supermarket, you'd move from the main onto secondary roads and then, finally, near the cliffs of Blue Rock, you'd catch the first glimpse of the sea, the view as you approached unfolding, sapphire and vast, once you crested the hill.

She followed the road along the cliff, which then veered inland and down toward the harbor, brilliant now too in the afternoon, sailboats rocking on their moorings, and in the distance other white triangular sails cutting fast across the blue. The road led around and down to another access road, to the beaches, to Shore Road.

There was one last good summer. As the weather warmed, the tensions between Nora and James began to fall away. He arranged for two weeks off, and the first morning left bed at sunrise and ran, before anyone else had stirred. There was, in both of them, a listening, something perhaps instilled by the sea, Nora might have said, though James would say only that the summer calmed him. They had not expected to return to each other so quickly, and did not mention it, as if saying anything might sweep away what seemed itself another dream. Yet, in that moment, it was as if they were younger, a sensation at once new and comfortingly familiar, James his playful attentive self.

Two weeks of runs in the mornings; two weeks of lounging with Delia and Sara on the beach. Once, he and Katy lunched together down at the harbor front; once, he and Theo rented a canoe and paddled along the cove. In the late afternoons, he and Nora had drinks with the neighboring MacFarlands; evenings, if the wind was down, dinner out on the deck. He and Nora did not argue; it seemed they had nothing to argue about. It had something to do with the air, the body giving over to the place. Blue Rock lulled him; in summer it had always lulled him. Soon there was little beyond the immediacy of the moment. In the morning, he would find the daily
Globe
, quickly skim it, and set it aside, shedding interest in anything beyond the requirements of the day or the house or the schedule of tides.

And in Nora, the rigidities, the resistances melted away: she found, then, the return of desire. The cumulative effect of the light, shifting from orange at sunrise to clear lemon, of the sky's
cornflower blue streaked by high white cirrus clouds. The sea became cobalt, red tones tinting the waves late in the day; when the sky was overcast, a deeper green tipped by whitecaps. Sunsets to the west still splashed pink into the eastern sky and across the water, the clouds reflecting the pink and the water reflecting the clouds. There was the cumulative effect of the tidal lapping, the black starry nights and the paler black nights, the curved reflections of the moon; the cumulative effect of breathing, of no longer holding her breath, not knowing until then that she had been. The effect of her late-night stirrings, when she would slip outside, barefoot and in her robe, to the deck or even to the beach, downwind from the open house, so that the breeze would sweep away all sounds. Then she could let herself tumble, let a spasm of breathless grief pass through her, after which she again found the air, and leaned back and watched the stars. Sometimes James found her there and led her back to bed, and he was, then, her James, his the body she would fall into.

And when he began again his commute to Boston, the hours of light stretched long enough to give him clear pink early mornings, and the late hours of syrupy light, the shift through orange to indigo; more drinks with Joan and Pete MacFarland, easy dinners on the deck, the kids content after their days at the beach, Theo reading, Katy beading bracelets and showing them to James, the little girls climbing onto his lap.

August thunderstorms, predawn lightning cracking wide the black sky over the black sea, jagged lines to the northeast, and
the felt-sense of water spilling over in the dark. The weather Nora loved to sleep in, and often could not, because the little girls would wake. There was a lull in the storms, the rain diminishing to a mild drizzle, when James got up. She would later remember wanting him to stay in bed with her, to make love before the kids woke, and after to loll in bed listening to the rain, as they used to. “Come back,” she said, and for a moment he did. For a moment he lay against her, skin damp and smelling of soap and of James, the clove/shaved-wood smell she thought of as his. She could feel his weight, and wanted to stay like this, with the rain falling, and the sea sounds mixing in, and the world beyond the room asleep.

A moment. Then he was dressing in a wheat linen suit and blue shirt and striped tie, transforming himself into the citified James, and he was down the stairs. In a few minutes the scent of coffee began to rise. In the distance, a faint rumble, another storm coming through. The little girls would call any minute, and the morning's ease or difficulty would depend on how the storm affected them, how well they'd give over to a change of plans. Because there was in these storms a permission to ignore the day as you'd expected it would be, to break open the hours, follow their eccentric configurations. The lightning streaked over the sea, jagged but oddly delicate, followed by tremendous thunder. After dawn, the sea was gray-green and ribbed with whitecaps, and yes, she could hear the little girls, a somewhat plaintive “Mama,” from Sara. And when Nora went to find them, Delia was standing up in her crib, facing the window, watching the fat streams of running water, her face ecstatic.

ROME

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (c.1647–52)

CHIESA DI SANTA MARIA DELLA VITTORIA

Northwest of the Piazza della Repubblica, against a swirl of urban traffic, Chiesa di Santa Maria della Vittoria: an aura of disturbance. Inside, above the main altar, thick gold clouds cluster, chunky and graceless, and small faces peep out, gold rays enunciate the heavy composition. To the far right of the altar, beyond the pews, a clear sarcophagus holds a mannequin: a bleeding young woman.

To the altar's left, set off behind a protective rail, the main attraction: Bernini's famous
Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
. She's nearly alive, the swooning marble Teresa, her skin luminous, the drape of her robes delicate, the flowing lines a superb deceit, as is her face, her mouth an O of pleasure and pain. In a moment, she may rise out of the stone. Gold rays splay above her, an aperture in the wall bringing in more light. Nearby an impish angel readies another piercing arrow; marble opera boxes line the upper side walls, galleries from which a marble Cardinal
Cornaro and other notable marble men gaze down. Below, along the wood guard-railing hang laminated pages from the life of Saint Teresa, describing in three languages her terrible exquisite pain, her rapture.

A rising into light—say, divine light—or an obliteration? Orgasmic bliss, here with the torturing angel, the scrutinizing men, and the text proclaiming the splendor of her pain. Do not forget—how could you?—the larger scene dominated by those chunky gold clouds, and opposite the Bernini, just beyond the pews, the bloody mannequin girl.

FALL

Yet once summer gave way, so did the relative harmony. Often Nora and James rotated through separate rooms of the house, and in the same room remained silent, and when in conversation spoke curtly, not knowing why, and in bed remained disengaged and separate. After September, when the hours of light shortened and the season's cloud cover thickened, James became restless, and spoke again of other towns. As if, seduced by summer, he'd forgotten about the colder, darker seasons; as if, after five years, the long commute came as a surprise.

Barely light—or still dark—when he left the house in the morning, full dark when he returned. The sound of the sea washed over everything as if it were the sound of darkness. He did not like living in a town of nightscapes, although in early morning, a calm settled as he quickly traveled along the South Shore. Until the last several miles he moved unimpeded up the highway and found reprieve in the solitude of the car, the blue air of half-sleeping towns dotted with floating colored orbs of traffic signals, convenience store signs glowing. On the radio, news from Washington, or New York; news from abroad, read without fanfare by an anchor whose steady baritone pitch knit
a surface of reason over the chaos; or a string quartet, a duet for piano and violin, a bit of Paganini. Sweet coffee from the donut shop. A purposefulness would take hold as Blue Rock dropped away, and the highways extended north, and Boston's southern industrial flank rose into view, on better days the light still peach-inflected, momentarily lending the steel containers, the rusting ship hulls, the smoke-blackened warehouses and dull russet boxcars a candied gloss. And then Boston's downtown appeared, awake, and he left the highway and crossed onto the busy surface streets with their close press of cars, the rush of pedestrians in good overcoats and fine shoes, the women wearing lipstick and colorful scarves. His office waited—quiet, uncluttered—reports and notes neatly stacked, computer on, his calendar open. More coffee. The usual half hour of reading before phone calls and meetings began. The day's obligations streamed forward, and though they would become layered and chaotic there was still a logic, an underlying structure they did not lose. In this space he could think. In this space there was no feeling of diminishment (headhunters often contacted him; bonuses often appeared), no sea sounds, no wash of darkness.