The Blazing World

Harriet Burden Notebook O

Come over, Rune said on the telephone yesterday. He had something to show me, part of “our act,” and he gave me a clue: “your happiness.” And we made the date for four o’clock today, and I knew it was time to plan the revelation because there had been enough yakking in print about the show, and yes, coming out would make me happy. That was yesterday. Today you drove into Tribeca, and you see yourself now, smiling as you leave the elevator, buoyant because the whole story is almost over, and you and your coconspirator are about to let them have it, and you think to yourself, I will levitate like my masked dancer, rise up from the earth like a phoenix. You really couldn’t have taken much more of it, anyway, you think to yourself, and you sat down, and he asked you if the clue had led to a solution, and you said to him, Yes, it’s time for me to burst into bloom, to find my happiness. It’s time to tell everyone. You explained that the Open Eye piece will be published as a letter in the next issue, that it gave you a delicious pleasure just to think of it, and then you thanked him. You thanked him for being part of it. You thanked him for letting you “wear” him. You leaned over and patted his hand, and you smiled again like a goddamned idiot. You smiled.

And he lit a cigarette and looked at you. He smoked and jiggled his knee and licked his teeth, and then he inserted a DVD into the television. I want you to see this, he said, and don’t say I didn’t give you a clue, because I did.

I saw Felix and stopped breathing for several seconds.

I saw Felix and Rune.

I saw them beside each other on a sofa in a curiously empty room — nothing on the wall behind them.

And I said, Why?

Just watch, he said to me.

I shook my head back and forth. This is what happened, wasn’t it? I felt shocked. And I was afraid. I didn’t want to see the two of them, but I couldn’t turn away. I watched them sitting on a sofa in an empty room.

I watched Felix, who had been resurrected on film. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just a pale gray shirt and the green-gray Hermès tie his mother had given in, the one he dripped salad dressing on at a dinner that was held at the Met, the one that couldn’t be saved by the cleaners, and I remembered the flowers on the table and the place cards and my boredom that evening at the museum. What year was that? I asked myself desperately. After that dinner, he couldn’t wear the tie again. I remembered that the two men on either side of me turned their backs to talk to whomever, and I was left alone with my internal narrator wondering why I had come. I looked into the eyes of my dead husband on the film and at his smoothly shaven chin and at the gray hairs near his forehead and tried to remember when his mother had given him the tie, but I couldn’t. His hair had white in it, but later, later his hair would turn all white.

I waited, full of dread, for something to happen, but the two men did nothing. They stared straight ahead into the camera, and then, after maybe a minute had ticked by, they exchanged a smile, and turned back to face the camera.

Had it been an intimate smile?

I gaped at him and said, Why didn’t you tell me you knew Felix?

Felix for happiness, he said, your Felix, your happiness.

Harry, you sat across from Rune and your face had fallen. You don’t know what your face looked like, but you know you couldn’t disguise the hurt.

It has nothing to do with you, my love, Felix said. It has nothing to do with you.

What are you doing here, Harriet?

You should not be here.

But why didn’t you tell me you knew Felix? Why didn’t you tell me you knew Felix?

Does it matter? Does it matter that we were close, Felix and I? he said. He talked about you a lot, you know. He thought you were brilliant. He admired you.

This is part of the game, I said. Isn’t it?

And he said it was the game, more of the game, and he took a key out of his pocket. He held it up. It hasn’t opened a door for years. It’s just a souvenir.

It was cruel. He was cruel.

And what did you do, Harry? You put your hand over your mouth to hide what was happening to it, and you stared at the floor. Is that correct? Yes, you remember holding your mouth with your hand, so he would not see your emotion. What did you feel? Disbelief? No, not that, really. The cut of betrayal, old and new. And then you lowered your hands. Your face had gone still. Yes, you could feel its stillness.

I attract you, don’t I? he said to me. He stood up. I stayed in my chair, and he put his hand on my neck. I excite you, don’t I? I shook my head no.

No, I said aloud, no.

Should I play Felix? We could play Richard and Felix, don’t you think that would be fun? Or we could play Rune and Felix. You could be me.

I did not look at him. I would not look at him.

You do know what Felix liked, don’t you? You do know what gave him happiness, don’t you? Come on, you must know.

I did not speak.

It’s so simple, he said, so, so simple. He liked to watch.

And my head had nothing inside it.

How shall we do it? he said. Maybe you would rather be Ruina? Felix watching Richard and Ruina could be fun, or Rune and Ruina, or Rune and Richard. We could pretend he’s watching. Your happiness, your Felix. Did Felix know about you, Harry? Did he know your secret? You are Ruina, aren’t you, Harry? I was playing you, a repugnant, sniveling, insecure little cunt.

These are the words I remember. I will remember them as long as I live. They will be my scars.

I sat in silence, as still as a stone. Harry, the stone. He talked about how well it had gone, Beneath, how much better than he had expected. He was surprised by its success, really surprised, and he moved his hands to my shoulders and gripped them hard. He said, But then, really, think what would have happened if your name had been on it? You are right, Harry. It would have been nothing.

And still you sat there while he pressed his hands into your shoulders, and you did not throw them off or make a move to stop him. You did not scream or hit him. And when he moved his hands to your throat and squeezed gently and said he was just playing around, where was your rage then, Harry? What was wrong with you, Harry? He said strangling can be exciting, orgasmic, as long as you don’t go too far.

Were you afraid, Harry?

Yes.

And then he let go of your neck, but you did not move then either. Did you?

No.

And then he slapped you, hard. And did you move?

No.

You were like a child frozen on a stool in the corner, a child who had been punished for speaking out of turn, for not raising her hand in class. A silent child made of stone.

And Rune said he was going to keep the work as his own. It’s mine now. It’s disguise and more disguise, Harry, he said. You lift up one mask and you find another. Rune, Harry, then Rune again. I win.

What did those words mean?

And then he said, People know, people know about your illness.

My illness? I repeated.

Your mental breakdown.

And I thought, my breakdown? Did I have a mental breakdown? Was that a mental breakdown I had after Felix died? Yes, probably. I had told Rune about the throwing up, about Felix, about Dr. F.

I became conscious of my swallowing. I had to swallow loudly. I couldn’t remember how to swallow quietly anymore.

Then the stone child stood up on its stiff stone legs, leaned over, and picked up the purse that belonged to the happy woman who had come through the door earlier. How many minutes earlier?

The feet mechanical go roundI

She found the jeep on Hudson Street. The world outside looked jittery to her. She looked into the windows of Bubby’s and saw people eating, forks in motion, up and down. She saw mouths chewing, a hand curling around an amber beer on a table. She saw another mouth open in a laugh and, below it, a chin bobbed, above it, eyes squinted. But her motion was not theirs; her rhythm was not theirs. It had never been theirs, had it? No, she lived in another time, another tempo. She drove to Red Hook, whoever she was, and she lay down on the floor of her studio. The Barometer brought her a drawing of a fallen angel with huge veined wings. He said, You look dead, Harry. She said, I feel dead. And he said, That’s okay. Don’t worry. It happens to all of us sometimes, and later, hours later, she called Bruno, and when he came, she told him some of the story, but not everything. She had to hide her shame, cover the burns that would become scars. She could not tell him about Ruina, that unhappy child who had turned to stone and then walked into the street with her head down.

I. Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, 372. The line is a quotation from the poem that begins, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”