Painted Ladies

27

I met Rosalind Wellington outside of a poetry-writing class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on Brattle Street.

“Remember me?” I said.

“You’re that man who was with my late husband when he died,” she said.

“Spenser,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I remember you.”

“May I buy you a drink?” I said.

She paused for a moment and then nodded.

“Why?” she said.

“See how you are, talk about your husband,” I said.

“I guess we could go to the Harvest, next door,” she said.

We sat at the bar. The Harvest was a bit elegant for the likes of me. I was probably the only guy in the place wearing a gun. I asked for beer. Rosalind ordered Pernod on the rocks. When it came, she took a considerable swallow of it.

“So how are you?” I said.

“Life is for the living,” she said. “I’ve never been one to indulge the past.”

I nodded.

“So you’re okay,” I said.

“Loss is the price we pay for progress,” she said. “Only as we leave things behind do we move forward.”

“Oh, absolutely,” I said. “I’m glad you are able to be so positive.”

She had cleaned up her Pernod, and I nodded at the bartender to refill.

“Life is neutral,” she said. “We can choose to make it positive or negative.”

“Of course,” I said. “That’s very insightful.”

“I’m a poet,” she said. “Life is my subject.”

“And you’ve chosen to make it positive.”

“I choose every day,” she said.

Her second Pernod arrived. She seemed positive about that, too.

“Was your husband as, what, philosophical as you are?”

She sucked in a little Pernod.

“My husband was greedy,” she said. “And self-serving and sexually addicted and very concerned with what others thought.”

“Bad combination for a philosopher,” I said.

“Covert and driven,” she said.

“ ‘Covert’?” I said.

She smiled sadly and swallowed some Pernod.

“ ‘A life of quiet desperation,’ ” she said. “To borrow from Emerson.”

I was pretty sure she was borrowing from Thoreau, but I felt my cause would be better served by not mentioning that.

“How’s your poem coming?” I said.

“I’m always working on poetry,” she said.

“I was thinking of the one you were going to write about your husband’s death.”

“It is still in the formative stage, but I know it will be free verse,” she said. “A long free-verse narrative of the soul’s journey through sorrow.”

“I look forward to reading it,” I said.

“My husband is so difficult to render artistically,” she said.

“I’ll bet he is,” I said. “Tell me about him.”

She fortified herself for the task by draining her second Pernod. I nodded again at the bartender. He brought her a fresh drink, and she nodded her thanks imperiously. I’d noticed that certain lushes get imperious after a couple of pops, trying to prove, I suppose, that they aren’t lushes.

“He was . . . He was a tapestry of pretense. Nothing about him was real. A . . . a pastiche of deceit.”

“You love him?” I said.

“I thought I did. What I loved was the mask, the costume of respectability he wore to cover himself.”

“I’m fascinated,” I said. “Tell me about that.”

She snorted, albeit imperiously.

“Prince wasn’t even his name,” she said.

“What was it?” I said.

“Prinz,” she said. “Ascher Prinz. He was Jewish.”

“Oy,” I said.

She paid no attention. I didn’t feel bad about that. I was pretty sure she paid no attention to anyone.

“He was ashamed of being Jewish,” she said. “He never spoke of it.”

“Do you know why?” I said.

“No, I don’t,” she said. “For me, all ethnicity is an enriching source of authenticity, without which one can hardly be a poet.”

“Did he want to be a poet?” I said.

She looked startled.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Did Ashton want to be a poet?” I said.

“God, no,” she said. “Why would you think that?”

“Just a random thought,” I said.

“There was no poetry in him,” she said.

“Was there something in him?”

“You mean artistically?” she said.

I could see that she was trying to nurse her current Pernod, and it was stressing her.

“Artistically, professionally, intellectually, romantically, whatever,” I said.

“I . . . I really can’t say.”

I nodded.

“When did his family come to this country?” I said.

“Ashton’s?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t really know that, either,” she said, and gestured to the bartender. “I do know that his father was in a concentration camp. So it would be after World War Two, I guess.”

“You know which camp?” I said.

The Pernod came. She drank some. I could almost see her tension loosen.

“Oh, I don’t know. He never talked about it, and they all sound the same to me, anyway.”

“You poets are so sensitive,” I said.

“What?”

“Just being frivolous,” I said.

“Oh,” she said.

I could see that she was losing focus.

“Tell me about his, ah, sexual addiction,” I said.

She sort of grunted.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” she said. “He wasn’t addicted to me.”

“Hard to imagine,” I said. “Who was he addicted to?”

“I couldn’t keep track,” she said. “He liked college girls, I think.”

“Well, he was in the right place,” I said. “Do you know any names?”

“God, no. You think I cared? You think I kept track? He was just another prancing, leering goat, and the only people who could possibly have been interested in him were silly girls.”

“Does the name Missy Minor mean anything to you?”

“Sounds like a silly girl to me,” Rosalind said.

Her s’s were starting to get a little slushy.

“But you don’t recognize the name?” I said.

“Silly stupid fucking girls,” Rosalind said.

The window had closed. I nodded. Then I picked up the check from where the bartender had put it, and took out money and paid.

“Could I take you home?” I said.

She was staring into her Pernod glass.

“And come in?” she said.

“Just take you home,” I said.

“Course not,” she said. “So you just go ahead. Go ahead. I’m going to stay here and have one more . . . for the road.”

“Well,” I said. “Thanks for talking with me.”

“Yeah,” she said. “You just go ahead.”

Which I did.