Control Page 2

  “You beat.”

  “Right, honey, but how? I’ll tell you. You try with everything. What do you try with?”

  “Everything?”

  “Right again. Tonight’s the night the business starts expanding, baby. Daddy’s gonna be traveling a lot and working a lot and no matter where he is, he’ll call you.”

  Myrtle began now to sharply shake her head.

  Sol looked at his daughter. “I’m going to tell you the family motto now, Edith—my daddy told me and I’m telling you. I’ll say it and then we’ll say it together. Okay?”

  Edith waited.

  “ ‘When you’re not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.’ Okay? Both together?”

  “When you’re not practicing—”

  “—practicing—”

  “—remember someone somewhere is practicing—”

  “—is practicing—”

  “Good. Now say the last alone for Daddy.”

  “And when you meet him he will win,” Edith said. It was easy to remember. And she loved her father’s kiss. She just wished her mother’s head would stop shaking…

  The last of the ninth came and went for Sol not much more than a year later, and though he tried like hell to force it into extra innings, it was no go, and on the way back in the limo, Edith, in the jump seat, was the only one with the least sense of control

  Control.

  She had no notion then of the importance that word’s meaning would come to have for her, but as she sat in the jump seat staring at the driver’s neck, she could hear she was the only one in the vicinity who was silent—both her mother and Sol’s dad had totally lost it

  Lost control.

  Myrtle holed up in the duplex those next months, keening, usually in black. Kith, in her standard Brearley uniform—navy blue jumper and pleated skirt—went straight on back to school. The school authorities kept close tabs on her at first, traumas being no fun for anybody, especially ten-year-olds whose fathers die, but Edith gave them no cause for worry. Oh, her grades slipped slightly—she was no longer first in her class but closer to tenth—but that was still an excellent achievement.

  For Edith it was a lot more than that; when you were tenth, you were in control.

  She breezed through Brearley, her only close call coming junior year when she did the painted backdrops for a ghastly production of The Cherry Orchard. It was such a sad play, it moved her so, the faded grandeur of the characters, that she spent long hours after school fiddling with her work. You don’t paint sadness, of course, you feel sadness, and somehow transmit that feeling to the art work and when she was done, she was exhausted. Not an unpleasant fatigue.

  The next day, though, when she got to school, there was unpleasantness enough for everybody. Because the head of the drama department had seen her work and brought in the head of the art department who brought in the head of the school, and they summoned her, all three of them to the room where her backdrops were.

  “Edith I just love these,” the drama head said. The Headmistress nodded. They both then looked at the art department.

  Edith’s eyes flicked for the door.

  The Art head, a painter herself, studied the main object, an enormous panorama of the cherry orchard itself. The colors were autumn colors. And the overall feeling was one of such sadness. “I didn’t know you could paint like this, Edith.”

  “I didn’t paint that,” Edith said quickly. “I just copied it.”

  “Copied?”

  “Well, I don’t mean I traced it or anything, but I didn’t make it up either. I mean, it was just an illustration 1 found in a book about other productions of The Cherry Orchard and I just enlarged it ‘Enlarged’ I should have said, not ‘copied.’”

  “From our library?” the drama head asked.

  “Actually no, it was my father’s book, he loved Chekhov, his father was from Russia originally.”

  “This is all getting beside the point,” the Headmistress said. “What matters is the work. It’s gifted work, Edith.”

  “Just an enlargement,” Edith replied. “But thank you.”

  “You must paint more,” the art department told her.

  “Oh I will, I will,” Edith said, smiling at them all Naturally, it was the last time at Brearley she ever picked up a brush.

  Radcliffe was unavoidable. Sol had wanted a son, a Harvard son, so what could Edith do? She maintained an easy A-minus average, did a number of helpful extracurricular activities and was, for someone naturally quiet, popular. No surprise there really. By her late teens, Edith stood five six, with a good lithe figure and a good warm face. Not pretty in a cheerleading way, but the features were strong, she was obviously kind, and her reddish hair by now tumbled wonderfully down her shoulders.

  Sally Levinson was her first close friend, and Sally was pretty in a cheerleading way. Small and blond, pert and bouncy. At least in appearance. She had as foul a mouth and good a mind as any man at Harvard and said she didn’t give a shit who knew it She and Edith made a team more formidable than most men wanted to tangle with.

  Phillip Holtzman seemed the least afraid. He was older than they, he had been in service and was in the Graduate Business School at Harvard while Edith was still a junior. He was tall and thin and people said he looked like Abraham Lincoln, which drove Phillip slightly crazy, since as he patiently explained— Phillip did everything with great patience—he didn’t resemble Lincoln at all. Who he looked like was Raymond Massey who had played Abraham Lincoln, both on the stage and in the movies, and Massey didn’t look like Lincoln either. All of Phillip’s reasoning came to naught: his nickname at the B School was, then and forever, Honest Abe.

  “You gonna marry him now or after graduation?” Sally asked after Edith came in from a date one evening. Sally was in bed reading Berenson, her God.

  “Oh stop it,” Edith said.

  “Well it’s so obvious, you ass. You never fight, you never argue. You’re both so decent It makes me sick, Edith, it really does. You probably compete with each other to see which of you feels more guilty after you fuck.” Pleased with her tirade, she went back to Berenson.

  Actually, Edith and Phillip fucked happily and well. And they did, in point of fact, argue. An increasing amount as senior year was coming to a close, Phillip’s Business School graduation too.

  Always about the same thing: Edith wanted Phillip to take over the family business; Phillip wanted to strike out on his own. He’d always been a scholarship student and Edith’s money had never been much of a plus in his eyes. But more than that, as he told her again and again, if he assumed an ongoing enterprise, how would he ever know if he had what it took, whatever “it” was. Edith countered that he was jupt being stubborn, that Sol had always planned for the Mazursky company to be a family company, that Sol had taken over from kis father and she, Edith, was surely not going into the real estate business, so if he wanted her, Phillip had no choice.

  Well I want to marry you, Phillip said. But I’m my own man.

  Then maybe we ought to think about it for a month or so, Edith said.

  It was during that month she met Doyle.-”

  Doyle. Doyle Ackerman. A Yalie. A swimmer. A star. Not all that bright. Or all that kind. And he was the first man that obviously was after her because of her money. But he had the best body Edith had ever seen. And he moved with instinctive grace. And he seemed always to be back-lit, he was that beautiful.

  Edith was almost ashamed of the way he made her feel. So she kept it all quite secret. Phillip never knew about Doyle. Even Sally, who did know, kept her mouth shut. Edith would say she was going to New York on weekends, but instead head for New Haven where Doyle would take her to his roommate’s parents’ summer place on the water near Mystic. It was still out of season. No one was around. Not a lot to do. But bed.

  She made her deal with Phillip before the month was out. He was studying for a major final but she tracked him to his carrel and s
uggested that they be original and get married in June, six weeks away. And that he work three years for Mazursky’s. He could start in the mailroom for all she cared.

  Phillip doubted Mazursky’s had a mailroom. It was a real estate concern, not the U.S. Post Office.

  Edith said she thought everybody started in the mailroom.

  Phillip said go on.

  After three years he could quit and no arguments.

  Promise?

  All she wanted was for him to be a millionaire, why was that so terrible.

  Phillip smiled, said June was fine and now please shoo so he could study. She left him to his labors, but then a few moments later, she tiptoed back and took a quiet peek. He looked a lot in profile like Lincoln…

  Phillip did not become a millionaire immediately; it was well over five years before the deed was done, and busy years they were. Whatever his needs were, Edith filled them. At first he would come home at night, silent and tight, because after all his college study what did he turn out to be but a son-in-law.

  That was all they thought of him in the Mazursky offices. Some Harvard hotshot who had managed to snooker the heiress into marriage because he wasn’t smart enough to make it on his own.

  So untrue, Edith soothed. False, all false. And she buoyed him and boosted him, pushed when he needed pushing, shoved when he had to be shoved. Within a year, the bosses at Mazursky knew that someone Special had come in to roost. Because Phillip was that—inexperienced, sure, but brilliant. And tenacious. You told him something once and he had it. He was there before you in the morning, hours after you at night.

  Edith never felt remotely alone, because that first year, happily, Kate came along, asthma and all, quickly followed by Abigail and Caroline—no Robin or Pamby for Edith, thank you very much.

  And if she was attentive to Phillip’s needs, she was at least that with the girls. Being who she was, she could have afforded whatever help she deemed necessary, but except for a wonderful Colombian named Alicia, Edith did it all. The cooking, the diapering, the walking in the park. (Carl Schurz. They lived on East End then. It wasn’t till Edith turned thirty that they made the move to the house on Beekman.)

  When it came time to find schools, the easy thing was just ship the three to Breariey; except something nagged at Edith, she wasn’t sure it was right for ail. So she thought and fretted before deciding that Kate, the most studious, might follow in her footsteps, but that Abby, the most artistic, ought to give a. try. to Daiton while wild Caroline could best thrive in the rough-and-tumble of Ethical.

  It was more work for Edith, all the trips to the various institutions, but worth it, since the girls did wonderfully. As did Phillip.

  And Edith most of all.

  When she was thirty-three, and the girls were ten, eleven, and twelve and Phillip was starting to get famous in the business community, she said to him, one night, after their lovemaking, “I’d like to paint.”

  “Paint?”

  “Yes. I’m alone all day now and the back maid’s room is just used for laundry. It could make a studio. I don’t need much room.”

  “Do it. Wonderful.”

  “I’ll stop as soon as they come home. Or if you want to take me with you on a trip. Or—”

  Phillip kissed her on the mouth, then stroked her reddish hair. “You’ve been so selfish all these years, there’s just no end to it.” They fell asleep in each other’s arms. They still did that.

  So Edith took the back maid’s room and cleared it out and cleaned it up and bought the basics and set to work. She stopped each day whenever the first child got home, and she never started until the last had left in the morning. And if one of them was ill, she didn’t paint at all.

  But except for those times, she put a lot of effort into her work. It was understood the room was off-limits to the family. When she was ready for things to be seen, they would, of course, be available to one and all. But until then, the maid’s-room door stayed shut.

  It was months and months later before she opened it for Phillip. There was a canvas resting on her easel, a large canvas, perhaps six feet by four. Covered by a dropcloth. “The truth how,” Edith said.

  Phillip gave his Boy Scout sign.

  Edith pulled the dropcloth clear and waited while he looked. (He was staring at the first of what were to be eventually referred to as the “Mazursky Madonnas,” but no one knew that then.) What he was staring at was a meticulously brushed work of a woman standing by an endless clothesline that snaked around the entire canvas. The line ran clear off the top right of the work, going to eternity as it were. And the clothes got progressively larger as the unseen child grew. And on the face of the mother, the washerwoman, the female faced with this seemingly Sisyphean labor of a lifetime, was a dazed, perhaps imbecilic smile.

  “I’m terribly proud of you,” Phillip said.

  “Oh boy,” Edith said. “Am I in trouble.”

  “Well, you said the truth.”

  Edith made a laugh. “And I meant it, but when I said the truth, I didn’t mean you couldn’t lie a little.”

  “I am proud of you. That’s a tremendous amount of work. I think it’s fabulous you did it.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t know anything about painting, you know damn well I don’t.”

  “But?”

  Phillip sighed. “It’s not exactly what you’d call a happy painting, is it, Edith?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Aren’t you happy, Edith?”

  She was and said so.

  “I guess I just like happy pictures, that’s all.”

  Edith made a nod…

  The instant Sally knocked the next morning Edith was at the door with, “I hadn’t meant to show you anything yet, Fm not ready for you yet, but I need an opinion and—”

  “—oh dawling,” Sally interrupted, her accent almost too thick to understand. “I’m sure if you’ve done little cutesy-wootsy girls with big eyes I’ll just adore it.”

  “You can cut the English shit, Sally!”

  Sally knew a Moment when one was at hand. She said no more, simply gestured for Edith to lead on. They went to the maid’s room, removed the dropcloth, looked at the thing in silence.

  Sally broke it finally. “Do me a dozen, I’ll give you a show.”

  Not the kind of statement that could be mistaken for bad news.

  Edith increased her work hours from then on. Not that she burst into a wild creative frenzy. She was still a mother. And she was still a wife. But her painting became an integral part of her. And within a year, she’d done a dozen paintings. And Sally gave the show.

  It was neither critically, nor financially, triumphant.

  No one came close to buying a painting, and when that fact became unassailable, just before the show closed, Sally set about, m secret, buying them all herself. She phoned various clients and had some buy one, most two, and she swore them to silence; they sent her checks, so Sally could exuberantly show Edith, and Sally sent her own checks to them back by return mail.

  And there were pitifully few reviews.

  But they were murderous.

  SIC TRANSIT ETC.

  One must mourn the passing of the Levinson Gallery. Not that it’s closed, understand. The doors, alas, are still open. But any pretense toward quality must now solely remain in what remains of the mind of Mistress Levinson.

  This fall is by no means sudden. These reflections are merely the result of seeing the latest Levinson offering, entitled “The Mazursky Madonnas.”

  Conceivably Mazursky has talent, but so do many graduates of the Art Students League. She may actually understand line and color and if she works very hard for a decade or two. could be deserving of a show. But now it is amateurism run rampant on a field of blue.

  The Madonnas, by the way. are basically housewives in various states of despair. It is not our province to discuss what is and is not proper subject matter for artists to undertake. Crane did The Red Badge of Courage and ne
ver saw battle. But when a New York real estate heiress chooses to throw her lot with the plight of poor wedded women, one has to wonder—they did, after all. choose to get married, didn’t they?

  “He’s a rotten little turd,” Sally cried, trying to rip the copy of the Voice from Edith’s hand. Sally had read the review that morning, had rushed up to Edith’s to head off any possibility of Edith seeing the notice, but when she got there, it was too late. Edith had taken to buying the Voice since she’d begun painting—no one did a better job of covering the offbeat, at least not to Edith’s thinking.

  Edith put the paper down. “Phillip invested in a play once. I remember, after the reviews came out, we all got very busy trying to find quotes we could use for an ad in the Times. If galleries did that, we could say ‘deserving’—”

  “—He’s been out to get me for years—ever since I told him his boyfriend had bad breath—he’s not reviewing you, he’s reviewing me. He’s an ass and he knows nothing-—Jesus Christ, you sold every goddam painting, doesn’t that prove he’s a fool?”

  Edith rewarded this outburst with a hug. She held tiny Sally with great gentleness and said, “You, my dumpling, are the fool. You poor dear dumb sweet thing, sneaking around, buying those paintings yourself, pretending you weren’t.”

  “Who told—I’ll kill ‘em—”

  “—Edith was not born yesterday,” Edith said. “Not where Sally is concerned. And I’m not upset, my darling—I never expected to have a show, I had a show. How many thousands of people out there who would die for one. I am not yet El Greco, I am not Van Gogh, and I plan to continue because it gives me such pleasure. And I would like to talk to you now about that. I would like to talk about ‘The Blues.’”

  “What, you evil bitch, are ‘The Blues’?”

  Edith moved across the living room and stared out at the East River. “I liked it when you gave my show a title—’Madonnas’ focused things for me. I’d like to do another series and I want to call it The Blues.’”