Camilla Page 9

  I said, “I’m sorry.”

  Then he said, as though it were very difficult for him, “I blame myself for it. I shouldn’t have asked you the questions I did when I took you out to dinner the other night. I was—I was not myself.”

  “No,” I said. “It wasn’t that.”

  “Then what?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Then he tried to explain it to me in his way, just as Jacques in the afternoon had tried to explain it in his: “Camilla, your mother is a very beautiful woman.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And Nissen is a very clever man. He flattered your mother, and perhaps he turned her head for a brief time. However, it wasn’t important, and the blame is Nissen’s, and not your mother’s. It’s all over now, between your mother and Nissen, anyhow. Whatever little there was is finished.” I looked at him and I wondered if he thought he was telling the truth or if he was just saying what he thought I wanted or ought to hear; but his face was set in the immovable lines of the statues of the Roman senators in the Metropolitan Museum and his eyes seemed almost as blind and blank as those of the statues.

  But truth seemed to be changing. I had thought that truth was always simple and clear. A thing was true or it was a lie. But now, as time seemed simultaneously to stand still and to rush by me with the startling speed of a meteor, I knew that truth was as complicated as time.

  Then, “Camilla,” my father said, “I know that you’re at an age when things have a profound effect on you. But you must remember that the things you do also have their effect on other people. After what—what happened to your mother last night, it was not kind of you, to say the least, to run off this afternoon. I want you to go in to her now, and tell her that you love her and that you’re sorry.”

  I asked my father then a strange question, one that popped out of my mouth without my expecting it to, and that surprised me as much as it surprised my father.

  “Father, was I an accident?”

  My father sat very still for a moment; then he said, “What do you mean?”

  “Did you and Mother want to have a child?” I asked. “Or did I just happen?”

  “Of course we wanted a child,” my father said. “I wanted a child terribly.” But he did not look at me. He looked down at the blotter on his desk and made a group of strange markings on it with his pencil. He said, “I think you’re seeing too much of Luisa Rowan. You’ve had all kinds of strange ideas since you’ve known her. Why don’t you see more of the other girls at school?”

  “I do,” I said. I wished I hadn’t asked the question because now I knew the answer.

  My father looked at me and he said, “Camilla, you mustn’t be so unhappy. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and I wanted to hold him and tell him how very terribly much I loved him so that he would never know that the fifth time my mother had answered the telephone herself, but I just stood there under the strength of his hand until he said, “Go in to your mother.”

  I went to my mother’s room. She said, “Oh, Camilla, how could you, how could you?”

  I said, “I’m sorry.”

  And my mother said, “Tell me you love me.”

  “Mother,” I said, “are you ever going to see Jacques again?”

  “Oh, of course not, of course not,” she said, moving her head back and forth on the pillow. She looked white and delicate and there were tears in her beautiful eyes. “Oh, Camilla, Camilla darling,” she said, “there was never anything to it, never anything to have made all this terrible mess. I was just—oh, my baby, tell me you love me.”

  And I thought, How can I tell her I love her when I don’t love her? When I look down at her little white face on the pillow and all I feel is cold, cold, as though there were an icy wind blowing into my heart? I did not even feel hate any longer, but just a cold numbness, as though I’d been given a shot of Novocain that chilled my entire body. I turned and walked out of the room. I felt that I was doing a terrible thing but I could not, I could not do anything else. I went to my room and I got undressed and I was tired. I was so tired that it was too much effort to take a bath or even to brush my teeth or wash my hands and face. I pulled on my pajamas and got into bed and lay there with the door into the hall closed tight. I tried to say my prayers. I said “Our Father,” but it didn’t mean anything.

  I was almost asleep when the door opened and my mother came in. I opened my eyes and stared at her through the darkness of the room and the fog of my sleep, while she leaned against the post of my bed as though she could hardly stand up.

  “I couldn’t let you go to sleep without kissing you good night,” she whispered, and she bent down and kissed me. When she left me, the fragrance of her perfume stayed behind her. It was perfume she had worn for Jacques and somehow she was still dead.

  5

  I GOT UP AND HAD BREAKFAST with my father the next morning, but I could not talk to him and he could not talk to me, though once he said, “Camilla, somehow I should have been able to keep this from touching you.” Then, when he was finishing his second cup of coffee, he said, “Somehow it’s been all my fault. I’ve done everything wrong. You mustn’t blame your mother.” Then he said, “Well, I’m going to the office.”

  I said, “Yesterday I passed an apartment house of yours, Father. Is it going well? Is it going to be a beautiful apartment house?”

  My father shook his head. “No, it’s not. There was to be sunlight in every room, and space to breathe, and a feeling of the beauty of the city as you looked out the window; but my plans have been taken and distorted and cramped, and now it is just going to be expensive. Very very expensive.”

  “Are you working on anything that is beautiful now?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” my father said. “I am designing a small private museum that is very beautiful, and it is that that is keeping me alive.” Then he smiled at me and said, “My funny little old woman. Keep your head in the stars, my darling; you see how you can be hurt when you get involved in the things that are happening on earth.”

  I wanted to tell him that an astronomer, to be a good astronomer, has to have his feet planted very firmly on the earth, otherwise what would his discoveries mean? What could he do with them? But my father got up from the table and came around to me and kissed me on the top of my head quickly, which is the way he always kisses me, and in a moment I heard the front door slam behind him.

  I went down to Luisa’s. Mona let me in. Oscar jumped up and down and tried to lick my face, then took up his usual place as close to Mona as possible. Even though I have never seen her do anything but scream at him, the dog worships the ground that Mona walks on, and this fact always makes me feel that Mona has more niceness in her than I have ever noticed.

  It’s a funny thing about Mona. She’s a good-looking woman; she certainly dresses well and when I’ve seen her occasionally with other grown-ups she’s been witty and vivacious. Yet when I think of her I always see her in my mind’s eye as a woman with a scarred face. I wonder if it’s because her spiritual scars somehow speak from somewhere deep inside her to somewhere deep inside me, and somehow get visualized as though they were scars of the flesh. That sounds like Luisa, but it’s the only way I can express it.

  Now Mona said to me abruptly, “Sit down and talk to me. I sent Luisa out to buy some coffee. Saturday morning and no coffee in the house. Come on. Sit down.”

  I sat down on a chartreuse-covered chair and Mona sat on a very low sofa and put her feet up on the cluttered glass top of the coffee table. She reached for a half-empty glass and took a swallow and I realized that she was drunk. Not very drunk, but drunk enough to ask me to sit down and talk, something she would never have done ordinarily. Luisa had told me that sometimes on weekends her mother drank too much; I had never seen it before; I had never seen anybody I knew drink too much, and it startled me.

  “Well, and how are you this morning, little Miss Iceberg?” Mon
a asked me. “Happy as a nasty, cold-eyed sea gull?”

  I didn’t say anything. I looked down at my feet and wished that Luisa would hurry back with the coffee or that Frank or Bill would appear, but it seemed that Mona and Oscar Wilde and I were alone in the apartment.

  Mona poured herself another drink. “You know what Luisa, my own daughter, told me this morning?” she demanded. “You know, hah?”

  “No,” I said.

  “She told me she would like to die. What a thing for a child to say to her mother! Would you like to die, Camilla?”

  “No,” I said, and it was true. I no longer had my desire of the night before for oblivion, and I was filled with an ache of pity for Luisa, whom I had treated so shabbily.

  “No?” Mona asked. “Why not, hah? Sometimes I wonder why people value life so highly, why I haven’t killed myself, put an end to the wallowing in misery like a pig in the mud. It isn’t my unselfish love for my children. Frank and Luisa can both get along very well without me. Probably better than with me. What a way to bring kids up, anyhow, in the middle of a filthy city. Kids shouldn’t be brought up in the city. Kids who’re brought up in the city aren’t kids. They’re—they’re like Frank and Luisa, they know too much. Or they’re cold little clams like you.”

  “I’m not cold,” I said.

  “Hah,” Mona said. “I was brought up with elm trees and a big backyard. That’s what I should have given Frank and Luisa. Middle West solidity. Everything I had to escape from.”

  The door banged open then and Luisa hurried in with a bag of marketing. “Hi, Camilla, sorry if I kept you waiting,” she said in a falsely casual voice. “I won’t be a moment.” Then she turned to Mona. “I’ll make you a pot of coffee in a minute, Mona. Meanwhile you might leave Camilla alone.”

  She went into the closet-kitchenette and I heard her turn the water on full force and bang the coffeepot down on the stove.

  Mona started to laugh, and laughed and laughed, her head flung back against the sofa, the tears of this strange mirth streaming down her cheeks. “You see,” she gasped. “What did I tell you!” Then she finished her drink, put her glass very carefully down on the table, and said in a voice that was suddenly low and sober, “Why is the fear of death so much greater than the fear of life? I’m so ghastly afraid. If I weren’t so afraid, I’d have been dead long ago. Maybe it’s because we realize—oh, subconsciously, subconsciously of course—that life is a tremendous gift, and we’re afraid of losing that gift because—oh, hell, I don’t want to be blotto. Even if I’m in agony I’m alive. Oh, how much easier a time people had of it when they had religion.”

  She stopped short and said, “Luisa told me to leave you alone. I’m not leaving you alone. Why did Luisa tell me to leave you alone? Because I might tell you that some people in this world actually live, actually feel? What would you know about it? You’re one of the protected ones. No worries. Parents who wrap you up in cotton wool and guard you from life. You’ll wake up someday and then you’ll be hurt. It’ll do you good to be hurt. Why should my kids be the only ones to be hurt?”

  Luisa came in with the coffeepot in one hand and a cup and saucer in the other. She put the cup and saucer down on the glass coffee table, filled the cup, then banged the coffeepot down beside it; there was a sound like the report of a shot, and the glass top of the coffee table cracked right across.

  “Damn it!” Mona screamed. “Why can’t you be more careful! Get out of here and leave me alone! Both of you! Get out!”

  Luisa grabbed me by the hand and we hurried into her room. She sat down on the bottom bunk of her double-decker bed. “Mona’s drunk,” she said flatly.

  “Yes.” I wanted to say something else but there was nothing else to say. I couldn’t say she wasn’t drunk, because she was; and I couldn’t say it didn’t matter, because it did.

  “I don’t know why she drinks,” Luisa said. “If she got happy when she drinks the way Bill does I’d understand it better. But she just gets like this. It never gives her a lift. And then she feels lousy on Monday when she has to go back to work. I will say for her she never drinks on a weekday. I’m sorry you had to see it, Camilla. I think if you were anybody else and you saw her this way I’d have to kill you.”

  “I know,” I said, because I knew.

  “I don’t know what she said to you,” Luisa went on, “but she didn’t mean it. She always says awful things to people when she’s drunk. If she talked to you at all it means she really likes you. She just won’t speak to people at all when she’s drunk if she doesn’t like them. But I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” I said clumsily. Then I said, “Luisa, if you still want to psychoanalyze me, it’s okay.”

  As I said this Luisa’s face lit up and I knew that the gift I had offered her was the right one.

  “Honestly?” she exclaimed.

  “Honestly.”

  “But I’ve been trying to get you to let me for ages and you never would— Well, come on, let’s get going! What am I waiting for!”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Go ahead and start.” I was not looking forward to being psychoanalyzed and I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. I don’t think all this probing business is good for people. It’s just a good excuse to talk about yourself and I don’t much like to talk about myself.

  She got up and went to her desk and found a pad and pencil. “Well . . .” she said, and began tapping the pencil against her teeth and thinking.

  I sat down and waited and looked about the room while I waited so that I would not start thinking about myself or problems.

  I like Luisa’s room. It’s painted yellow, and around the wall of the bottom bunk of her double-decker she has pasted a frieze of postcards she’s bought at various museums. Under the frieze sit her dolls. They use the bottom bunk and she sleeps in the top bunk.

  But now she said, “Please get up, Camilla,” and swept up all the dolls and said, “I have come to a great decision.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Well, I thought you should lie down here as though it were a psychiatrist’s couch, and then I wondered what to do with the dolls. And then I decided. I am sixteen. I am a woman. If I still like dolls it must be neurotic. So I am going to send them all over to the hospital. Even the one from Jacques that you gave me. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No,” I said, “of course not.” I’d be just as happy not to have to see that doll.

  Now she dumped them all into the corner. “Okay, let’s begin,” she said in a businesslike way, but I could tell she was excited and pleased at the prospect. “Would you mind if we pretend I’m a real psychiatrist? And you’re a real patient? I mean, would you mind if we pretend we don’t know each other?”

  “Okay,” I told her. “Anything you say.”

  She sat down at her desk then. “What is your name, please?”

  “Camilla Dickinson.”

  “And your age?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Place of birth?”

  “Manhattan.”

  “Now, would you mind lying down there on the couch, please?” Luisa said, pointing to the lower bunk.

  I lay down and stared at the slats and the springs of the upper bunk, and through them at the blue of the mattress ticking, and, at the sides and foot of the bunk, the tucked-in edges of sheets and blankets.

  “Now, Miss Dickinson,” Luisa said eagerly, “please tell me exactly what happened between you and Jacques Nissen yesterday afternoon.”

  But this I could not, could not do. Even though I had seen Mona drunk I could not tell Luisa that Mother had talked to Jacques again after everything. I had offered to be psychoanalyzed because that was the only thing I had to offer her because of having seen Mona drunk, but I could not in turn show her my own mother naked as I had seen Mona. In any case I did not think her question was fair; I thought she was taking advantage of the psychoanalysis, so I said, “If you’re the psychiatrist and I’m the patient and you’ve never
met me before, then you don’t know about Jacques Nissen.”

  Luisa’s eyes darkened with irritation. “Okay, then. What man has had the most influence on your life in the past few months?”

  This wasn’t fair either. “I don’t think a psychiatrist would begin an interview like that.” I looked at one of Luisa’s postcards, a Marie Laurencin lady who reminded me of Mother, and kept my eyes averted from Luisa. “But if you must know his name it’s Frank Rowan.” I knew that I was making Luisa angry and the awful part was that now I was doing it deliberately. It wasn’t really that I wanted to anger Luisa, because I had honestly and truly offered to be psychoanalyzed just to please her; it was as though I had a little imp sitting in my ear whispering malicious things for me to say.

  “Frank isn’t a grown man,” Luisa said.

  “The other day you said he was,” I reminded her. “You said he was too old for me and you’re always saying I’m a grown woman.”

  “Okay,” Luisa said. “Let him be important to you if you want to get hurt. I’ve never seen Frank stay interested in any one girl for more than a couple of months. Pompilia Riccioli lasted almost three months. That’s about the longest.”

  I knew, I knew she was saying this just to upset me because she did not want me to like Frank. And she succeeded; I was upset. I remembered the pretty girl Frank had spoken to in the movie lobby the night before. So I just said, staring at another in the frieze of postcards, an angel of Lauren Ford’s, “If you’re going to analyze me you’d better get on with it.”

  “You have to cooperate,” Luisa said. “The analyst can’t do anything unless the patient cooperates.”

  “I’m cooperating.”

  “You aren’t,” Luisa said. “You’re bucking me at every step. And you’ve got to be completely truthful.”

  “I am being truthful. But I thought analysts began at the beginning. You’re beginning at the wrong end. You’re supposed to go back practically to—to prenatal influences,” I finished impressively.