As We Are Now Read online

  I think it is almost three weeks since they left me here. I get frightened of losing all sense of time. I can’t remember when it was I did come—some time in June, I guess. It has been too damp or too buggy for me to sit outdoors. But I could insist on going out at least for a short walk. Why don’t I? I think it is because after a short time, even a very few days here, one begins to feel like an animal in a cage. Even if the door were open, one would not dare move. It is the sense of being totally abandoned, so at first one goes way down deep into oneself and stays there just as a frightened animal does. I have an idea now that John was told to stay away. I have often thought about those visits to people in jail—a few minutes, a visit long looked forward to, but bringing with it chiefly wild nostalgia or despair. The difference is that it is hope that is hard to handle. Most prisoners foresee a time when they will get out. Here we know there is no way out, only down, little by little, till death do us join with whatever comes next, if only dust to dust. Hope is one thing of which we are deprived.

  One of my problems is that John, after all, is eighty and has no very clear sense of time passing. He may honestly believe that he has left me here only a few days. Or Ginny may have forced him to go on a trip to her people in Ohio, or somewhere. I have thought of writing but I wonder whether the letter would be mailed, and I cringe at the thought that it might be read and thrown away. Also, if it did get there, Ginny might do the same.

  Lately I have come to see that John and I never really understood each other. We took each other for granted, I suppose. But I cannot remember any real talk we ever had—about ourselves, I mean. We talked for hours about books and about the state of the world. We had fierce arguments that we enjoyed, but our parents were troubled by our ferocity. Their philosophy was peace at any price, and if possible under a Republican administration! The fight went out of John when he married Ginny. Thank God I never got married, never gave my body and soul into the keeping of anyone. Unregenerate I surely am, but I’m myself alone. There is some dignity in that. And I guess that is why I have not written—“dumb from human dignity” as Yeats said, but that was about passionate love.

  The other day I was lying on my bed having a rather good think about Alex, the Englishman I loved, off and on, for twenty years, married of course, so I saw him only in the summer for brief weekends, and only twice for journeys we made together, once to Greece and once to Italy. Harriet interrupted here, and with her sharp needle thrust into this reverie.

  “What are you dreaming about, Miss Spencer?”

  “My lover,” I said.

  I saw her gesture as Rose came in, pointing to her head, saying without words “crazy as a loon, of course. This poor old thing never had a lover—senile.” It was written on her face as clear as clear.

  Am I senile, I wonder? The trouble is that old age is not interesting until one gets there, a foreign country with an unknown language to the young, and even to the middle-aged. I wish now that I had found out more about it. Loss of memory—but some things remain so vivid! In some ways I am not myself, that is true. In the first days I tried setting up mathematical problems, but I couldn’t seem to concentrate. It is not so much that, though, as that I am not interested in the abstract cogitation any longer. I am interested in me. I am a long way still from the fulfillment, the total self-understanding that I long for now. I remain a mystery to myself. I want to get right down to the core, make a final perfect equation before I am through, balance it all up into a tidy whole. If I could think of this place not as the House of the Dead but as the House of Gathering—the house where I have to come to terms with everything, sort it all out, accept it all, I think that might be salvation, a rock on which to stand at least. It is all quicksand and threat still. I cannot get used to being here. It feels so makeshift. No paintings on the wall. Dust under the bureau. I never thought I should be asked to sleep in muslin sheets, or have to swallow daily doses of sheer vulgarity and meanness of spirit. If this is Purgatory it is hard to imagine Paradise as in any way attainable, or only in the imagination as a self-created place.

  I am amazed at how much time I can spend apparently doing nothing, when in fact I am extremely busy with this kind of dreaming-awake that sustains me.

  I have never liked women very much, too intense. I have been passionately attracted to one or two in my life, but that is different from liking. I like men much better. No woman would bear what Standish does in the way he does—so tart and bitter, so authentic. He is too angry most of the time to be sorry for himself. Anger keeps him alive. It is truly hard that we cannot talk. If only he were not so deaf. He looks at me with very bright clear eyes when he is awake and (how absurd this is!) I find that I try to look as well as I can for him. My hair needs washing and a rinse. They promise, but of course these things never do get done. But Standish notices a bright scarf or a piece of jewelry and gives me a wink of approval. I would write him messages, but apparently they have lost his glasses—he says he can’t read anymore. But sometimes he talks about his life, how hard it has been, how hard he worked, how finally he realized he would have to give up the farm as he couldn’t take care of the herd of cows himself and could not afford help. He had saved ten thousand dollars but it all got eaten up when his wife became ill, or almost all—he says he pays for himself here. I do hope it is true. Probably it is or he would not be allowed a room of his own.

  What keeps him alive is a deep, buried fire of anger that never goes out, apparently. Out of rage he refuses to eat anything for several days. I feel he is always planning a way to get around “them,” a way to get back at “them” by sheer tenacity, by passive resistance. Among the sheeplike herd we two are a different breed, rebels. Standish manages usually to get rid of the tranquilizers, hides them, then gives them to me to throw down the john. “They won’t get my head,” he whispers to me. “They won’t castrate me in that way. I’m still alive from here up,” he whispers, his hand at his throat. He has good hands, worn, but thin and sensitive. Sometimes I wish I could take one in mine and hold it hard—“We shall overcome.” I don’t because he is a touchy old man, and probably his chief escape is sexual fantasy.

  He talks about Harriet and Rose as if they were prostitutes, with considerable relish, and expatiates on their enormous bums and breasts. He has a repertoire of dirty jokes—childish jokes they are. I do not mind them and some are even quite funny. He gives a loud guffaw after telling me one, and then a quick look hoping he has shocked me. I suppose he imagines I am an old maid—I could tell him some things but they are not to be shouted. So I let him talk, and when he falls asleep I go back to my room. The conversational opportunities here are certainly at a minimum. But then we all talk to ourselves in a perpetual exercise of free association.

  I never thought much of psychiatry, but occasionally I imagine when I am lying here on my bed that I am talking to a wise and omniscient listener, a Doctor of Souls to whom I can say things I might not dare say to myself alone. Next time Harriet asks whom I am talking to, I’ll tell her, “My psychiatrist, so you’d better leave us alone.” Then she’ll be sure I’m crazy. And perhaps that is not a good idea. One could make oneself mad by pretending to be, I have sometimes thought. The borderline between reality and fantasy is so thin in this confined, dreadfully lonely place.

  I have not been able to write for days. I feel very bewildered and undone by John’s visit—at last—after four weeks! Of course Ginny stayed with us the whole time. It was a terrible failure on my part, because as soon as I saw them I began to cry so terribly that I couldn’t speak. I begged them to take me away. That was my second mistake. John sweated it out, I suppose, and Ginny talked a blue streak. Luckily I had made a short list of absolute necessities and Ginny promised to see to them and to come back alone in a few days. The list was stamps, note paper, lavender cologne, to order me the daily Boston Globe, to see that mail is forwarded (there must have been some since I left their house, magazines if nothing else), a summer wrapper, a pair of comfortable sh
oes, a raincoat, and several books.

  John did kiss me goodbye, but he couldn’t offer any comfort. He gave me a ten-dollar bill to put in my purse. It was done rather awkwardly, and I did not thank him. They stayed about fifteen minutes. I witnessed in my own flesh that we become moral lepers here, untouchables, from whom relatives flee because they can’t bear what they have done.

  “It’ll get better, Caro,” Ginny kept saying in her bright sharp voice. “Change is always hard at your age.” But I am not ninety, nor am I insane! They brought me a carton of cigarettes. The doctor warned me—they must know that—that smoking could be fatal after the heart attack. Well, perhaps, the kindest way of offering suicide! I shall ration myself, and see. More likely they simply forgot about the heart because they have shut me out of their minds.

  Harriet kept lurking around the corner and just when I tried to tell them about how awful it is, she came in ostentatiously with a cup of tea for me, cooing, “Here, dear, this will make you feel better.”

  “Nothing will make me feel better,” I answered. I had an impulse to knock it out of her hands, but restrained myself. Then she addressed herself to Ginny as if John and I did not exist.

  “Miss Spencer has been very good,” she said. “Of course she’s a lady and we are a bit rough and ready for someone like her, but she never complains, do you, dear? They all go through a period of adjustment, you know, and visits are quite hard on them sometimes.”

  I was wracked with sobs from sheer rage and despair.

  “Here’s a Kleenex … blow your nose, dear, and you’ll feel better.”

  I couldn’t wait for John and Ginny to go. I felt as though I were breaking into pieces with shame and misery. Wanted only to be left alone, and now, damn fool, I am weeping again from writing this down.

  How long a journey will it be and what must I do to myself to learn to control my feelings here? Let woe in and it’s next to impossible to get it out again. The only person who helps me is Standish. He said, “Come in here, woman, and stop bawling. If I were you I’d say a dirty word. I’d say several. Didn’t stay long, did they? Families are great until you really need them. I never asked a living soul for anything, and now look at me! Shit,” he said, “shit on the lot of them!”

  But I can’t curse John. He couldn’t even look at me, he was so miserable.

  Later I took the tranquilizer Harriet gave me. But I must not do that again. It made me feel very logy and queer. All I have is my mind and I must keep it clear. Remember that, Caro. Don’t let them steal your mind.

  Today is a dismal day, pouring rain and wind. The trees bend and strain, and leaves and twigs are torn off, a chaotic world, even outdoors. I put on my pink blouse to cheer myself up, but it seems to me I look queer and gaunt since I came here—there is already a change in my face, so it startles me each morning. Can this worn-out, haunted old body be me? My eyes used to be so blue but they have faded. And my mouth, rather stern at best, looks thin-lipped; deep lines pull it downward. My neck anyway is pretty good for an old bird—none of those scrawny tendons showing. My pearl choker hides the wrinkles. But time at a mirror is worse than wasted time, Caro. It makes you feel depressed. Better turn the mirror to the wall.

  Until lunch I am going to lie here and watch the rain and remember all the picnics Alex and I had together. We used to take sketchbooks and go off in his ramshackle little car, with a bottle of wine, cheese and bread, pâté when we were in France, a pear or an orange. We had our worst arguments sometimes about choosing THE Place. How ridiculous we were! But it had to be just right, with both shade and sun if possible—once high up on a hill in a beech wood, looking down over a field, brilliant shining gold with buttercups and marvelous swanlike clouds going over all that day. For a change it did not rain. What did we talk about all those hours? Alex worked at Barclay’s Bank, some sort of junior officer—he never wanted to talk about that. But he read everything, a very wide-awake man with a bold, strong face, bright blue eyes and a wonderful chuckle when he was amused. And for some reason I amused him very much, the violence of my language, my American accent. We met in the National Gallery, classic encounter, in front of the Piero della Francesca Nativity. I always did feel that painting says something of great importance—stark, aloof, yet so moving because of the spaces. It struck me as a kind of spiritual equation and I pondered it that day, unaware until he spoke of the man standing beside me. “Rather a jolly thing, what?” I was so taken by surprise, to be addressed in that extremely quiet place, and to be addressed by an Englishman out of the blue, and what he said seemed so ridiculously inadequate that I laughed aloud.

  “What’s funny?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Such a jolly understatement!”

  He gave me a keen look then, taking me in, American written all over me. “What do you see in it?”

  From there we talked. He guessed I must be a poet, I guessed he must be a lawyer. We agreed that Piero would appeal to a math teacher. (Oh, I do wish I had a reproduction of the painting here!) Alex asked me very good questions. He really liked women. I decided long ago that American men really don’t—and before I knew what was happening we were sitting at Rules eating salmon and drinking hock. It was not an instant love, but it was instant recognition, rather a different thing. We enjoyed each other. I felt cherished and admired in a way I never had been before. That first summer we were not lovers. I was frightened, and also dismayed when I learned that he was married. But we wrote long letters to each other the next winter and when we met the following summer we knew that we had become deeply attached. Forty-five years ago! A love affair was a momentous journey to undertake for a person of my sort. But it helped, of course, that I was far from home. No one at home need ever know. And Alex persuaded me, for my sins, that since his wife had a lover, there was no reason why he shouldn’t engage himself in the same way. I got very fond of Sarah … life is so much stranger than anyone could believe! As I think back, it seems to me that we all behaved in a rather civilized way. There was no drama, no pulling and tearing. Alex did not want to divorce Sarah and I could see why. In many ways he was dependent on her. And she had an elusive charm, was extremely feminine, chic and capable. He liked comfort, order, and beauty, and all these she provided in an amusing little house in Chelsea with an infinitesimal garden at the back that she made into something as perfect as a scene inside an Easter egg.

  Did I want to marry him or did I just screen that possibility out? At one time I hoped to have a child by him—quite mad, of course, and Alex would have been dismayed at the prospect. They had two little boys, away at school when I first met Sarah.

  I believe that I wanted exactly what I had—that sense of adventure, those picnics, our zany travels together, the depth and range of our communion, yet without any of the usual responsibilities. I doubt whether I would have made Alex a good wife … the very thought of what would have been expected in the way of womanly grace and skill terrifies me even now. I was lucky. Only the goodbyes when I had to leave to go home each autumn were excruciating. I felt each time as though I were being asked to cut off an arm or a leg—an amputee. In those days we traveled by boat, of course, and the journey home was limbo. Often I stayed in bed for three days, tortured by missing him, and missing the part of myself that did not live at all in America. It was hard even to write for the first weeks, as words seemed an inadequate substitute for kisses, for all that touch made happen between us—and I am not one to write love letters. I find them embarrassing. Words, except in poems, were not meant to be used as counters in a sensual game. Alex wrote me poems but they were not very good—dear man.

  By letter we exchanged our lives, what we were thinking and doing. As the months of separation wore on they became quite abstract, full of philosophical speculation. Amazing that it lasted nearly twenty years, and died, finally, chiefly because of the long separation through World War II. Alex was in some secret work and couldn’t tell me, anymore, anything about his day-to-day life. I sent food pa
ckages to Sarah every week, and, strangely enough, she and I wrote more intimately at that time than he and I did—the tides changed, the emotional tides. I would like to write more about this but I am tired. The word “picnic” has taken me on a long journey into the heart land, and in some way has given me peace.

  John’s visit seems rather irrelevant now. I am over the shock. Perhaps it is better that they do not come again, or very rarely. It just seems so unbelievable that I, Caro Spencer, should find myself here for good.

  Well, it turned out to be one of the worst days after that small interlude of peaceful memorializing. Our lunch was some sort of luncheon meat again, bread and butter, canned beans, and jello. I asked for mustard and was told there wasn’t any, a patent lie. Standish threw his lunch in the waste basket. I felt he had been getting a slow burn these last days and was sure to break out sometime. I guess the lunch was the last straw (Jell-o and bread and butter are the only things on his diet). He shouted obscenities at Rose, who burst into tears. Then Harriet came and told him he was a dirty old man and would have to be forcibly fed. I could hear him yell, “You just try that and you’ll be sorry!”

  But he is so weak, poor tortured beast, that the anger left him white and exhausted. If only I had a bottle of Scotch: a little drink would have done him good.

  The old men in the big room were unsettled by all the shouting, and even the always cheerful feeble-minded Jack had a fit of sobbing, a thing he rarely does. We are so like caged animals that moods spread. Today the mood was violently roused against our keepers. Apparently no one ate lunch in the end. I could hear Harriet and Rose muttering as they threw it all into the swill pail. They should really keep a pig.