Women and Men

still life: sisters sharing information

How it happened?" exclaimed the fair-haired woman. "How it happened?" she said, looking past her companion who sat with her back to the street window. "I don’t care how it happened. It happened."

"But if you don’t care," replied the other woman, who was younger, "how do you keep it from happening all over again the next time?"

She had hesitantly introduced herself to the fair-haired woman only to be invited to sit down; rather, she had found out who she really was after she had sat down.

"Don’t worry, it could never happen in the same way again."

"You wouldn’t kill him by the same method?" said the younger woman and put her finger to her lips.

"Oh, I told you he said that — that I killed him."

"I thought you did."

"He always was a braggart."

"Has he recovered from being killed?"

They smiled. "He’s immortal, that’s why he’s boring," said the fair-haired woman, whose name was Maya. She reached across to touch the other’s hand, looking past her as if easily distracted by the street. "I’m better now," she said. "He pushed me into this free-lance thing like he pushed me into the book. I’m better now."

They seemed to tell each other in the corners of their eyes that the large man two tables away was listening to them at his leisure. The younger woman felt this modest challenge from the man, who was bald but had bushy red eyebrows and a mustache to end all mustaches.

"That book was everywhere," she said. "I even saw it in Burlington; I saw it here, of course, and do you know I saw it in Albuquerque."

"Oh," said Maya, "it was everywhere for two or three months, and then suddenly you couldn’t find a copy anywhere. A lot happened too fast. I thought he was being supportive. He said, ‘Behind every successful woman there’s a good man.’ "

"Yes. In her past," said the younger woman.

"Sounds like you know from experience."

"Other people’s."

"Saves wear and tear."

"Saves time," the younger woman said.

"Why don’t I believe you?" said the other. "Oh hell, one picks up what one can."

"Maybe so," said the younger woman, "but I’m never sure what it means when I first hear it."

"Well, I overheard it," said Maya, "that thing you mentioned. ‘Behind every successful woman. .’ "

"You mentioned it, Maya."

"You’re right," said the fair-haired woman, in response to the familiarity. "We were at a party and he had his back to me when he said it. He was wearing the burnt orange sweater I bought him. I remember how he looked. Tall as he is, he looked almost slight. But then it came to me: Second-Generation Pig, that’s what he is."

"Second generation?"

"A generation’s only about five years these days."

"Listen," said the younger woman, "at least he wanted you to do something with your life." She cast an eye at their neighbor, the man with the red mustache; he had received a large puffed pastry powdered with sugar, and he tilted it in his fingers curiously, like something outstandingly large, before biting into it.

"By that time," said Maya, "he wanted me out of the way; that was what he wanted. You’re nodding," she said to her attentive companion.

"He wanted you out of the way?"

"But nearby — how about nearby? Happily surviving — how’s that?"

"What’s nearby?" the younger woman asked. "Same house? Same neighborhood?"

"You really ask the questions," said Maya.

"They can be painful to ask," said the younger woman, nodding, nodding.

"Especially if you know the answers already. There, you’re doing it again," said Maya.

"All I know," said the younger woman, "is I’ll be glad to live in this neighborhood for a good long time. It’s not at all depressing like the West Side, and it’s realer than the Upper East Side."

"I couldn’t agree more," said the fair-haired woman. "It’s where I’m happily surviving."

The younger woman uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other way. She leaned sideways on her elbow to sip her coffee. "You yourself said he wanted you to make something of your life."

"Why, he was proud of me. He bragged about me as if I weren’t there in the room; he reported my originality and my talents as if I were someone he happened to know. You’ve heard that story?" The voice eased into faint curiosity. "You’ve heard that one?"

For — as if to say, When will people ever learn? — the younger woman was slowly shaking her head, smiling with sisterly resignation: "Yes, I’ve heard it."

"Granted, it’s always nice to hear about yourself."

"There was nothing about you on the book jacket."

"You noticed."

"Suppose," said the younger woman, "the awful truth is that he’s right and you are talented."

"Listen," said Maya, "to hear him, you’d think I was consumed with ambition."

"What were you consumed with?" the younger woman asked, and then, surprised by herself, she laughed.

"Let me tell you," said Maya, "the Second-Generation Pig comes to you supporting your every endeavor. He wants for you what he knows you half-think you want. He tells you you’re loaded with talent, you’re incredible, you can do anything you decide to do. He’s a feminist, right? Wrong; he’s a closet pig."

"But this guy," said the other woman agreeably, "when I first sat down here, he sounded kind of special."

"You’re nodding again," said the fair-haired woman. Her fitfully blinking blue eyes looked away, undecided as to how lightly her needling had been meant.

"I mean," said the younger woman, feeling boring but smiling more or less good-naturedly and nodding hopefully, "the way you said he still phones, and he gave you the picture of yourself you didn’t know he took when you were working, and he tells jokes on himself, and he got that woman interested in you. He probably still loves you."

"Of course, he loves me now. Good old Dive."

"Dive?"

"My English for Dave. He did a lot of business in London in the old days. I guess it’s a term of endearment."

"Maybe it was once."

"He did take time off," said the fair-haired woman. "I mean, during the day though he’s a businessman."

"To do what?"

"I’d meet him here for an hour."

"Sounds nice."

"He scheduled me."

"Still, it sounds nice," said Sue. "I mean, you lived together but he took time during the day."

"One day — just like clockwork, one day a week," said the fair-haired woman, and actually looked at her digital wristwatch. "I’m talking too much. I’ve got an audience. So listen, Sue," said the woman with some touch of confidential humor. "Sue is your name? I just got this message from you: you would like us to be silent for a minute."

It seemed true. They looked toward the rather gross man with the brilliant mustache munching on his pastry. He raised his eyes to them from his paper.

They looked past him, past the marble tables on the ironwork stands, to the Gaggia machine in good, silver working order. A small woman firmly pushed down the steam handle. She wore a yellow T-shirt and she had fat upper arms. Between the accelerations of the afternoon traffic outside, the man could be heard chewing.

The minute of silence was passing. This was the best table; it was in the front corner formed by two broad street windows. The two women, who didn’t know each other except through a mutual acquaintance, raised their cappuccino cups, which were glasses in metal holders.

She had come here earlier than she’d planned, and she had recognized this woman and been invited to sit down. This was the unknown woman Sue had once seen across the street walking with the leader, star, and proprietor of a workshop Sue had attended. It lasted four weekends, it was called the Body-Self Workshop, it had been a bit of everything — terrifically tense getting out of the elevator, later a relief, a weird, quite happy relief. It had been really a mind-bending (literally naked) overload of rap, sympathy, information on food, eating, yoga, habit patterning, marital muteness, role constipation— just about everything and anything from speculums and sex-after-marriage to how the ancient mysteries celebrated the reunion of mother and daughter after the daughter has been raped during the harvest. So Sue and this woman had that in common — same workshop though not the same sessions.

But a moment later, when she learned Maya’s name, Sue couldn’t get over it. This was the author of a book she had bought and read, a book that had won an award. It was a small, wonderful book about the author’s weekend attempts at art and the spoor of strange signatures, monsters, and angels of patterns that weren’t there the first time you looked, the tangled clench, the struggle secretly recorded and perhaps actually dreamt by these amateurish oils and watercolors leading back, or was it forward, to the intrigue of the author’s own odd, half-free self which more and more looked like the true creation.

That was the book and here was the author, with a fresh tan from Trinidad, taking an afternoon coffee break at an Italian pastry place in the neighborhood. She had been meaning to come here.

She couldn’t get over it. This woman was the author of the book she had on the shelf in her living room. Maya’s book was a book to reread and see the author finding herself and sharing it.

"My boyfriend is named Dave," said Sue and stopped.

"It’s quite possible," said Maya, "and it’s quite possible he’s not a bastard."

"I don’t know how it’s happened, but he doesn’t appear to be," said Sue.

"You’re funny," said Maya.

"I mean," said Sue, "sometimes I think he’d just as soon not talk about it, but he’s been through quite a lot."

"My Dave hadn’t," said Maya. "He met me and made it up as he went along."

Sue opened her mouth. What came out was "I haven’t known him long. I mean, it’s been long enough. I really love him. We just bought a beautiful canoe."

Maya frowned. Sue nodded. Maya continued. Once upon a time, Maya was saying as if she were telling a story she’d told before, this Dave had had a mother, a mother and some brothers.

"Now that’s interesting," said Sue, who did not ask how many.

This mother had sent Dave out into the world trailing clouds of family pride. Maya told it from such a distance. This mother had told Dave to come back with first prize, otherwise forget it, she didn’t want to see him.

"Are mothers like that?" said Sue.

"I don’t follow you," said Maya.

The woman in the yellow T-shirt brought the man with the russet red mustache a small white cup of espresso and took away a cup. He opened his newspaper and refolded it.

This Dave had won first prize all right, Maya continued. Yes, indeed. He had done O.K. He had $300,000 in municipal bonds by the time he was twenty-nine. His mother was a beautiful person, he said; that was where he got his drive.

"Maybe he needed to explain it," said Sue. "I can understand that."

And so, of course, Dave had always needed women, and he had met Maya one afternoon when she was running up and down a train platform looking for her stolen suitcase, and later he wanted her to change her name from May to Maya after she had toyed with the idea. And he always sort of liked women, he listened, he asked questions about what they did and about their parents, and he touched them.

"Touched?" said Sue.

"He wasn’t very funny," said Maya, looking past Sue. A child yelled in the street. "But sometimes he had a jokey sweetness about him, and he did seem to listen."

"It’s nice," said Sue, who knew what she was talking about.

Maya frowned.

"I mean, it is," said Sue, but Maya’s frown, aimed at her cappuccino, might have nothing to do with anything but distance and with this story of Dave with its sense somewhere beyond even Maya — and a sadness that half-included Sue.

And always in that glass house he had built for her, there had been that mother. Well, he kept women on the far side of his mother; but this beautiful person, this ever-dark-haired, amber-eyed mother who never changed and when she was sixty-three her hair still looked like a painting, well, he actually didn’t see much of her, this great mother of his, even though—

"Did she live far away?" asked Sue.

— even though for a long time she lived close enough to drive to for a weekend (Maya had seen her the first time from a car window and didn’t know it). Later Dave’s mother sold the house and moved out West, right?

"What do you mean, ‘He kept women on the far side of his mother’?"

"What do you mean what do I mean?" said Maya, distracted.

"I guess I know," said Sue, and couldn’t look at anything but the metal cupholder in her hand. "I meant, what did he do when you saw this?"

A pale shadow went over Maya’s face as she looked past Sue over Sue’s shoulder, and the long window behind Sue seemed ready to expose Sue if she turned to look. It wasn’t that Sue was irritating Maya. The man facing them two tables away gulped some water.

"It wasn’t what he did, it was how he did it," said Maya.

"There you are," said Sue, "the how."

Maya frowned at her and looked past her out through the street window behind Sue.

"I only mean," said Sue, "it’s like I said. I mean, if you don’t want it to happen all over again the next time."

The pale shadow went over Maya’s face again. Her mouth was speaking. The story had a mystery missing from it, something left out, some act undone.

On a Saturday when Maya was at her table in the study, Dave would tiptoe down the hall like the dog moving over the floorboards, then stop at the verge, so her heart would start pounding, and she’d get mad — she admitted it. Then he would push the door open a crack and watch her, so she felt she was being checked up on and approved of; whereas, if he had knocked and come in asking if he was interrupting anything. . oh, it was all in how he did it. He made her feel like a well-endowed slave on display, when all she was doing—

"But no one can make you feel like that unless you’re willing to," interrupted Sue, recalling the workshop.

— when all Maya was doing was her own work although, mind you, it was stuff he pushed her to do. Like, there’s encouragement and there’s encouragement: "some encouragement is like alimony — deductible."

"But," said Sue, "when he came home for lunch when you weren’t expecting him, and he brought two splits of champagne—"

"A bottle, I said," said Maya, "didn’t I?"

"— it’s the gesture that counts," said Sue, "however he did it."

"But I wasn’t going to drink at one-thirty in the afternoon. I’m not his mother. I don’t even look like her. He even pointed that out to me."

"But champagne," said Sue, "an impulse."

"Maybe it would be different now," said Maya. "I really don’t know. His mother drank champagne; that’s all she drank. He sent her a case of French champagne at Easter and Thanksgiving, probably still does. He used to quote her—"

"His mother liked champagne?" said Sue. "So do I." She smiled impishly at Maya who frowned. "I mean," said Sue, "I’m not at all extravagant. I’m quite careful about money. When I wanted to buy a canoe, he was going to order a bark canoe although he would have had to go on a waiting list, but it cost thirteen hundred dollars, and for me the main thing was just that it wasn’t aluminum."

The newspaper crackled at the neighboring table and the man with the red mustache was heard to say, distinctly, "Good old Dive."

Maya rolled her eyes upward, lowered her voice a notch.

"He did bring home a couple of splits once."

"You see?" said Sue. "He doesn’t have a bushy red mustache, does he?"

"He appears to have changed his looks with the times," said Maya dryly.

Sue and Maya seemed closer. The woman in the yellow T-shirt leaned her elbows on the counter looking out toward the street.

Sue wanted to know how long they had been married.

Maya thought it over unhappily. She and Dave could be said to have been together, all told, for the better part of six years.

Sue said that Maya must really know the neighborhood. They identified the apartment houses where they lived. Sue got Maya’s address. Sue’s phone number was in the book with the initial S, she said.

When things were breaking down between Dave and Maya, rays came from him; he was hating her for knowing him, yet she kept reasonably quiet about it. She knew him, that is, too well.

"You kept quiet?" said Sue.

Later, more than earlier, it seemed to Maya. Dave seemed to think she didn’t know he was seeing someone; he couldn’t imagine that she would be angry only about how he was handling it.

"I don’t understand that," said Sue.

Like he was putting one over. For example, walking the puppy all the damn time. As for Maya, she didn’t want to know — that is, who it was.

"But you must have been angry," said Sue.

Maya looked past her out the window as if she had more to look at than Sue did.

The fat man exhaled audibly. Fresh cigarette smoke reached them.

Anger — it was a matter of degree. Of how things got said. Things had seldom been calm. Maya got a letter from her mother with advice on a particularly sore point. Maya determined to ignore the letter, not tell Dave; but then she left it on her table and, of course, Dave saw it and told her he sympathized. Then they got into a fight about it.

"About what?" said Sue, feeling the neighborly red mustache facing directly her way.

Maya’s not telling Dave.

"About the letter? A fight about the letter?"

"Isn’t that what I said?" said Maya.

She and Dave were close enough, and in the beginning Maya had never minded being dependent on Dave for love — wasn’t he dependent on her? He was so proud of her, didn’t want her to work, didn’t want her to clean the place until she said, hell, she had been used to doing her own place. However, it was two floors now of this brownstone he owned. And then she found him to be a greater slob than she’d first seen; he’d walk around the apartment first thing in the morning, brushing his teeth, his mouth full of toothpaste — and talking.

"Walking around?" said Sue, "talking? That’s. ." — she shook her head.

It had indeed been something to see.

At first Maya never minded being dependent on Dave for money, but not because in those "preinflationary" days she’d thought of her housework — her "homework" — as bringing in a portion of their income; his income was high even when she first knew him. Money was only money, and it wasn’t as if he had cleaned up at someone else’s expense — a chuckle came from two tables away — and if they had needed more money, she would have gone out to work again. But they were rich, comparatively — even not comparatively. She wasn’t saying it right.

"But I understand," said Sue, who had the slightest physical discomfort and was afraid the conversation had to get somewhere but might not. "You’re forgiven," she said to the other woman.

"You’re funny," said Maya.

"It’s behind you," said Sue.

"But money isn’t only money," said Maya suddenly. "It’s how hard you have to hack for it."

"Where in New England do you paint?" asked Sue. "I don’t think the book said."

"I don’t paint," said Maya. "I never had the slightest gift. It was Connecticut at first, Vermont later on. There was a problem about my getting a driver’s license."

"What was the problem?"

"I didn’t get one."

"How come?"

"I happen to think driving is insane," said Maya.

"What about being driven?" Sue asked. They observed the man with the red mustache licking his fingers.

Well, Maya was of the opinion that it depended on who was doing the driving, and Dave was perfectly adequate, so why pressure her?

"Really/’ said Sue, supportiveiy. But there she was, agreeing; and she added, "It’s hard to understand women who don’t drive; I think someone said that. But I couldn’t imagine not having my license." Again this was not quite what Sue had meant to say.

She felt she was overhearing Maya, who went on musingly, seeing from far off by private surveillance some poignant map of motions; see the women pulling into the train station parking lot at sunset in the springtime; see them busing the children to school; see them unlocking the back of the station wagon for the cute supermarket boy to unload the cart he’s wheeled out for you — a silver basket with a jammed wheel. Subjugation came step by step, not all at once, and suddenly there you were, you were in the picture, drawn in by some drug of living with others.

"That’s eternal," said Sue. Which came out flattering. "But don’t forget the women cab drivers up there in the front seat."

"Will you say what you mean," said Maya. She looked back across the room and smiled at the woman in the yellow T-shirt and pointed to her cup. The man with the bright, bushy eyebrows and the mustache to end all mustaches blew two smoke rings and would have managed a third but proceeded to cough violently, shaking his head and grinning as the women watched his paroxysms.

"Subjugation," said Sue. "Was it really subjugation?"

"No, for God’s sake," said Maya, "it wasn’t really subjugation. It was only in my head. Got any other questions? It sounds like you haven’t had your turn yet."

"I hope I don’t," said Sue.

"He sounds O.K.," said Maya gently.

Sue thought a moment. "I don’t know him too well yet," she said. "At least I can say what I mean to him."

"What you mean to him?" said Maya.

Sue shook her head and smiled tolerantly. "We’re more easygoing," she said. "I don’t ask him a lot of questions."

"About old loves."

"Right."

"Do you want to know?"

"Oh, once he had two girl friends going at the same time, and he was living with one. It didn’t make him exactly happy."

"Poor thing," said Maya.

"He did have," said Sue, "what he called a long misunderstanding with one person he really loved. I believe she was beautiful — I mean, I’m sure she was and," Sue shrugged, "he got really terribly confused, I gather. I didn’t much care to hear about her; I didn’t make a point of it, but he understood."

"I would have gotten every last detail," said Maya.

"Would you?"

"No. Yes."

"He said he was afraid she was suicidal, and once when they’d had a fight to end all fights, he felt suicidal himself — whatever that means."

"Which ain’t much," said Maya.

"But he said they could never have agreed on a suicide pact; he wishes he had made the point. They might have had a good laugh about it and parted more like friends."

"So he had a good laugh with you instead, right?"

"Right."

"Have you ever hated him?" asked Maya abruptly.

"I can’t say I have," said Sue.

"It’ll give you a rush," said Maya.

"I don’t follow you," said Sue. Maya had said the same thing to her.

"It’s liberating," said Maya.

"Well, I got a lot out of the workshop," said Sue.

"My dear," said Maya. "I think you haven’t smelled rock bottom yet."

"That’s true," said Sue bravely. "I haven’t been that desperate."

"It isn’t like any workshop," said Maya. "No one can tell you."

"I’ve listened to everything you’ve said," said Sue. "I’m hopeful. I’m getting married to my lover. We’re buying an apartment in my building. I’m pregnant; I didn’t say that. He’s glad. He’s quite a bit older, but he’s never taken the plunge. He’s wonderful. He’s amazing."

Sue had said too much. So she added, "I guess I didn’t mention I’m pregnant. It happened during the workshop."

Sue and Maya had to laugh, relieved of a burden apparently not there until it wasn’t there.

"You’re pretty," said Maya.

"Thank you."

"I get sick of being blonde with blue eyes," said Maya.

Sue smiled — rather sweetly, she knew. She turned to look out through the street window behind her.

"But to be blonde with eyes like yours," said Maya, "or to have my eyes and your hair — Celtic — that would be the thing. But what are your eyes?"

"Sort of brown," said Sue.

"Better than that," said Maya.

The man at the other table had a fit of coughing that wouldn’t go away until the instant before the woman in the yellow T-shirt paused to clap him on the back, coming with Maya’s cappuccino.

"That’s better," said Maya.

"But subjugation," said Sue seriously.

"You’re really asking for it," said Maya. "Remember, I can be held responsible for what I say."

One could use other words than "subjugation," according to Maya, if one wanted to split hairs. Anyway, this was how it had happened — in a nutshell.

Maya told it so Sue could practically see the man — she knew she could — through the words of this woman she’d run into in a cafe that her own Dave had given her the address of, that she had been meaning to come to all by herself until he had suggested today. For a while her time was going to be her own. Maya’s experience was not her experience, and she didn’t especially need to tell about herself. Actually, she was ready for Maya to go.

Maya’s words felt more directed to Sue than before, and Sue signaled to the woman at the Gaggia machine. There was a harshness that had been in Maya’s words that Sue recognized as now missing. The words were uncomfortable.

"He phoned from his office and asked me to meet him at the movies," said Maya. "Dinner was all out on the chopping board. I put it on hold. Take a break from cooking, he was always saying. Or he phoned from Chicago— Chicago! when I thought he was twenty blocks away! — he hadn’t known he was going until the last second, and he hadn’t been able to reach me before he left. But I’d been home reading, right? Pack a bag for both of us, he said, we’d have a long weekend with his friends in Montana. I said, ‘Montana?’

Sue felt the word "Montana." That is, sung from a familiar guitar by an easygoing voice, an already beloved voice that had recently taken up the guitar. Vm goin’ to Montana for to throw the hoolihan. She didn’t know what the hoolihan was. It was a type of cow or horse cowboys used to ride, she thought.

Sue said, "I would have gone to Montana."

"That was a weekend," said Maya. "I forgot my diaphragm, and Dave got paralyzed on top of our host’s roof just when a windstorm came up."

"Did you travel a lot?" asked Sue.

"Of course not. I was thinking about a job. And how would I travel with a job? And anyway, weekends aren’t traveling."

"So what did you do in between?"

"A lot of reading," said Maya. "I was reading science; yes, science. I sat reading from first thing in the morning till the middle of the afternoon. I used to get a phone call twice a day for a while. A variety of dirty phone calls I called a Sadness Call or a Tragedy Call: I’d pick up, and all I’d hear was someone weeping. I didn’t ask, ‘Who is this?’ They would hang up and the line would start buzzing. It sounded as if maybe not the weeping person herself had hung up. I told Dave and at first he didn’t believe me, but it was true. He paced the living room in front of the couch where I was lying with a drink in my hand, waiting for the timer to ring in the kitchen. He said my reading gave me fantasies. He got so he wouldn’t sit down."

"You were thinking about a job," said Sue. She was ready for Maya to go.

"I was reading geometry. Yup. Then I was reading economics; I was sick of hearing people talk about it."

"I know what you mean," said Sue, "but no one really understands it."

" ‘Why do you read that stuff?’ Dave said. He wanted to know what I thought of Delius’s ‘Florida Suite’; what did I think of a Dylan song, where had Dylan gotten it from? But then Dave would talk about economics after all, and he wasn’t over my head. The only advantage of public-venture-capital companies over private is liquidity, as I recall. It’s like those phone calls. I almost dream them. ‘Are you still getting those phone calls?’ he’d ask, as if he wanted me to bring up my insane fantasies. One night he said, ‘What are we going to do about you?’ "

Sue imagined him standing doing something — she wasn’t sure what— but straining his muscles putting out effort, a tall man.

"He demanded to know why I didn’t take my painting seriously," continued Maya. "I told him I enjoyed it, fooling around in a field, getting everything in that field except the horse, which I always left out because I can’t draw horses. Or sitting on a stump trying to get the color of a pond at five o’clock. He said that I should do something with the painting. He used to frown seriously as if he was really thinking about it.

‘You, you’re just waiting for something to happen,’ he said. I said things were happening. I was getting those phone calls. ‘That’s what I mean,’ he said; ‘you’re at loose ends, you don’t think enough of yourself.’

"One Sunday night in Vermont I was packing a bag. I mean, that’s what I’d do Sunday at that hour, like clockwork."

"You said that," said Sue. "You said you met here like clockwork."

"I meant on one particular day of the week. Guess which one. Well, that Sunday in Vermont, a picture of mine was lying on the bed. Suddenly I hadn’t painted it. I could see it. I don’t know how long this went on before I was aware of Dave standing in the doorway with his new safari bow."

It was so vivid Sue looked away. She saw the man wedge one end of the hunting bow against his foot and decisively bend the top end down to hook the loop into the groove. She saw him occupied. She saw pale stubble along his jaw. She saw rimless glasses that she wanted to change for Polo horn-rims but she couldn’t make out his eyes, which were aimed past her over her shoulder.

"He knew I was aware of him. Then he said, ‘Do you want me to pack?’ I didn’t answer because I knew what he meant, but, you see, I didn’t answer because I was in that picture of mine. I resolved to be nice and to the point: I said, ‘I’ve done something here.’

"Well, it released him from the doorway. I can visualize to one side of that door a photograph. I wouldn’t hang some dribble of mine, not even in a cottage in Vermont. He stood beside me. ‘You’re going to have a show,’ he said, T don’t care what you say. Compare this stuff to the stuff they sold at the outdoor show in August.’ "

"What was the photograph of?" said Sue, wishing to be alone.

"I never got to tell him what I’d started to say," said Maya. "I said I was going to settle for what I’d already completed. I let him misunderstand. I said all I wanted to do was look again because I had found some buried treasure in those pictures, if you could call them pictures. ‘There you go again,’ he said; ‘of course they’re pictures.’ Anger — I’ll never forget it. I was smelling him differently. Do you know he turned that bow into a sort of person who was with him."

"That first picture," said Sue, "in the field you found hands going at each other."

"Four handfuls of fingers, that’s right—"

"That’s how you got it."

"And nose-like things inside the still grasses, point to point. The eyes came later, but not real eyes — the land looking back. I found a pretty good horse standing inside the pond with lily pads for a saddle."

"I remember," said Sue, "you didn’t leave it out." She was feeling the weight of her legs so much she needed to stand on them. She remembered actual words.

"I told Dave it was a relief finding myself in those third-rate, little weekend smudges."

‘They weren’t third-rate," said Sue.

"That’s what he said — and how would you know?"

"I mean, not after you’ve read the book."

A distinct snicker came from the man at the other table.

There was another cappuccino in front of Sue. "I don’t know why I ordered this," she said. "I don’t think the first one agreed with me."

"Isn’t that quite normal?" said Maya. "You look a bit pale."

Sue wanted to ask Maya what her ex-husband had looked like. That had a mysterious way of showing you how to take other things.

"I felt the change," Maya said, "but I didn’t take advantage of it. ‘What do you mean "therapy"?’ he said. This is art and there’s someone out there who’ll pay for it — you said yourself that money makes work real; I didn’t say it,’ he said, ‘you said it.’

"So instead of peddling the pictures, I told on them. I loathe writing. It’s my frustration threshold."

"I always forget," said Sue, "does that mean the threshold is low or high?"

"It doesn’t matter," said Maya; "experience, I have learned, is frustration."

"It isn’t that bad," said Sue, "you should try other people’s."

"Because," Maya went on as if she hadn’t heard, "without it there isn’t any. I mean, I’ll say this for frustration, it’s always reminiscent of the next thing."

"Didn’t you write that?" said Sue.

"I wrote about this poor freak who was trying to reach out but was getting clobbered every step of the way. And that I did not write," said Maya. "I got so I could hardly see the original blob of my pond, my tree, my field; it was like taking your glasses off; you had to wait for that old scenery junk to come back, and even then it was a strain."

Sue sipped her coffee. "You said in the book that he encouraged you to doit."

"He found some pages I’d written in pencil. He said it was like a mystery. So I kept going."

"You had to," said Sue. She felt pale again.

"Steps came to the door of the study at midnight and went away."

"You were usefully employed," said Sue.

"Right. He asked if I would read it to him some evening."

"Maybe he had a hard time with your handwriting," said Sue, tilting her head to one side.

"So one day, the first thirty pages were missing. I had a daydream of being relieved. By sunset the pages had reappeared. I was so mad I couldn’t speak. I mean, I couldn’t think. One night he came home all excited. Someone else had been reading me."

"He’d Xeroxed them?" asked Sue.

"Susan, how did you guess?" said Maya. "He had them typed first. My confession. My salvage operation a piece of myself, as they say, in the hands of, as it turned out, if I do say so, a very smart woman. She wanted to see the illustrations. Everyone checking on me, right?"

"It sounds like help," said Sue.

"You understand how good I’d been," said Maya. "Keeping up the family tradition as if it was mine to keep up."

"You mean, come home with first prize or don’t come home."

"That’s it," said Maya. "You’ve picked that up. Oh, Dave joked about them, his family, but there they were."

Sue had only to wait for what she knew was coming; it came from that distance that had seemed to be Maya’s, but it was other people’s experience that had to be Sue’s — it was time.

"There they were," said Maya. "Dave’s father a legendary metallurgist, his grandfather a judge, great-grandfather an infamous, wall-eyed general."

The words were grotesque. She couldn’t stand them.

"But they’re Dave’s family; they’re not you," she said.

"As for me," said Maya, "Dave couldn’t talk about anything except my project."

"He got it published for you, for God’s sake," said Sue.

"What do you mean? What do you mean?" said Maya. "What’s the matter with you?"

"Did he ever brag about doing that for you?" said Sue. Sue put her hand on Maya’s wrist; Maya’s wrist felt warm; she withdrew it.

"Just the opposite," she said. "He didn’t have to talk about what he’d done for me; he knew I would."

"I’m sorry," said Sue. "I’m sorry for you both."

"I’m not," said Maya, "and neither are you."

"Let me cast the deciding vote," said the man with the bushy red eyebrows and mustache.

"This," said Sue, "is the sort of thing my fiancé would go out of his way to do for me if I wanted him to."

"Your fiancé " said Maya, as if that did it.

"And if I had your ability," Sue finished.

"In my opinion," said the man at the other table, "these are two entirely different men, a second-generation chauvinist pig (although ‘chauvinist’ was never the right word) and a somewhat battered third-generation."

Maya stood up and found a five-dollar bill in her bag; she dropped it in the middle of the table. "Who does get your vote?" she asked the man, "since you’ve turned out to be a male suffragette?"

"Oh heavens," said the man, and contemplated the flame of his lighter for a second before he lit another cigarette. "I’d like to vote for all of you."

"Why was it subjugation?" said Sue, having been paid for and feeling distinctly sick. "I really want to find out."

"Listen, Susan—"

"Sue, if you don’t mind."

"Were you ever ‘Susan’?" said the man.

"I was christened Susan," said Sue, not taking her eyes off Maya.

"Only the names have been changed," said Maya, sitting down.

"You women are turning out books right and left," said the man.

Maya rolled her eyes upward but seemed to accept the man. "After the book, Dave said I had to follow it up because people knew my name. I said one book was it. Then I got this free-lance design job through a pal of his."

"I’d like to get hold of your book," said the man. "Do you happen to have an extra copy? How do you feel about it now?"

"It was a wonderful book," said Maya.

"Where was the subjugation?" Sue persisted. "I don’t see what it was."

"The book," said Maya. "That’s where it was. It was me by me, forced by him, maybe I should say pushed by him."

"It sounds bigger than both of you," said the man.

"Each thing I did," said Maya, "had to lead somewhere, right? But I was happy as I was, wasn’t I? Dave had to show me off, the gifted lady he lived with. Then that wasn’t enough. He had to give me the gifts."

"I don’t get that," said Sue.

"Neither do I," said Maya. The woman in the yellow T-shirt made change at the table and Maya left a dollar. "Thank you," said Sue.

The woman stood there; she thanked Maya for the dollar that lay on the table.

"But this began quite a while ago," said the man at the other table. "If Dave was a second-generation pig, wasn’t he ahead of his time?"

"He transcended it," said Maya.

"You’re Elsa?" said Sue to the woman. She nodded agreeably.

Sue then didn’t ask what she had been going to ask. She felt sick and asked for a glass of water.

"This is hopeless," said Maya, getting up. "You have to find out for yourself."

"Maybe I’m a second-generation feminist/’ said Sue. "If we have problems, we’ll talk about them."

"I hate all those words," said Maya, turning toward the door.

"What were you doing in Albuquerque?" said the fat man. "You saw the lady’s book in Albuquerque."

"It was still sitting on a bookseller’s shelf after two years. I was on my way to visit my fiancé’s mother in Santa Fe." She stood up wearily.

"What were you doing in Burlington?" said the man.

"Dave has a cottage outside of Burlington. Why are we talking to you?" said Sue.

"And when your child is born," said Maya, "you will have a use for the inevitable extra bedroom."

"I have heard unconfirmed reports," said the man, "that marriage and love make doubtful bedfellows."

"But what else is there?" said Sue.

The man looked at the three women. "Maybe what I’ve been hearing about is first love and first marriage."

"You can’t tell by her," said Sue. "She was a victim of subjugation."

"You’re right, you can’t tell by me," said Maya; "Dave and I were never married."

"I thought so," said Sue.

"Ah," said the man, "the sore point."

"So maybe he’s still interested," said Maya.

"There are different kinds of love," said Sue. Then the fat man said, "You’ve seen him recently?"

Maya said, "What — fifteen, twenty minutes ago."

"You were here" said Sue.

"I was here," said Maya, "and he passed by and looked in the window. It happens."

"Dave," said Sue.

"He was right behind you," said Maya. "I’m sure he couldn’t handle it."

"Handle what?" said Sue, because it was the next thing to say. But this wasn’t the workshop. She hadn’t bugged anybody at the workshop, she hadn’t learned how. You could speak, and what came out was in you and you didn’t always know it except that it would be terribly obvious when it did come out. "But these two men named Dave we’re talking about—" she turned to the man at the other table— "why couldn’t they be the same man? There’s a lot to people."

The man was contemplating Maya. There were tears under her eyes. Her hand held the doorknob.

Elsa shrugged. "I don’t see your husband for a long time," she said.

"He hasn’t been here," said Maya, who held out her hand to Elsa as Elsa moved away from this no-man’s-land without having realized that that was what it was.

"Call it coincidence," said Maya to Sue, with a lot of eye contact.

"That he passed by when you were here?" said Sue.

"You too," said Maya — almost the very thing the Puerto Rican at the deli said when Sue told him to have a good day.

Maya pulled open the heavy glass door, and Sue was waiting for her to step out onto the sidewalk. "Maya, you said Dave had changed his looks with the times."

Maya thought a moment. "Yes, I see he wears a gold stud in at least one earlobe; I can’t blame you for that." The door swung slowly shut. Outside, she turned the other way; she didn’t pass the window. Sue thought they would never meet again. Then she thought, how could they help knowing each other?

"Dave seems to have recovered," said the man with the red mustache. "A man with a gold stud in his ear."

"Actually," said Sue, "it’s a tiny fourteen-karat mushroom."

"Conspicuous but discreet," said the man.

"It’s my Dave. You know that."

"There seems to be a lot of him to go around," said the man. When Sue did not respond, he added, "I mean there’s a lot to him, obviously."

"Do you think he’ll come back?" she asked.

"Oh, he’ll come back," said the man. "But maybe not today. Glad we got the mystery settled. Put two and two together, some days you get three. For a while there, I thought maybe he’d killed himself."

Elsa said, "You want your lemon ice?"

"Trying to get rid of me?" the man said.

"How did you guess?"

"The lemon ice is a work of art," said the man.

"I’ve got to get home," said Sue.

"You mean you want to get home," said the man.

She had been standing, and she almost sat down again. She lifted the glass of water to her lips.

The man said, "I feel I got quite a lot for my money today. But even if we now know that the two Daves are the same man, there’s still plenty to talk about."

At the door, Sue turned to him. "Other people have been through so much," she said. He nodded and smiled.

She was waiting for him to say something good.

"Tell me one thing," he said. "Why was it ‘amazing’ that Dave walked around the house in the morning with his mouth full of toothpaste talking? Maya mentioned it and you said it was amazing."

She was feeling queasy at the thought of that second cappuccino she’d had one sip of. "Now that I think about it," she said, "I was right. He doesn’t do it any more. At least I haven’t seen him."

The man raised his espresso cup. "Good luck," he said.