Cat's eye

I stand in the main gallery, black from neck to toes, with my third glass of red wine. Charna is off now, rummaging in the crowd for people who are dying to meet me. I am at her disposal. I crane my neck, peering through the crowd, which has blotted out the paintings; only a few tops of heads are visible, a few skies, a few backgrounds and clouds. I keep expecting, or fearing, that people I should know, have known, will appear, and I will only half recognize them. They will stride forward, hands outstretched, girls from high school bloated or diminished, skins crinkled, frowns permanent, smooth-fleshed boyfriends of thirty years ago who’ve gone bald or grown mustaches or shrunk. Elaine! What the beck! Good to see

you!

They will have the advantage of me, it’s my face on the poster. My smile will be welcoming, my mind frantic as I scramble through the past, trying to locate their names. Really it’s Cordelia I expect, Cordelia I want to see. There are things I need to ask her. Not what happened, back then in the time I lost, because now I know that. I need to ask her why. If she remembers. Perhaps she’s forgotten the bad things, what she said to me, what she did. Or she does remember them, but in a minor way, as if remembering a game, or a single prank, a single trivial secret, of the kind girls tell and then forget.

She will have her own version. I am not the center of her story, because she herself is that. But I could give her something you can never have, except from another person: what you look like from outside. A reflection. This is the part of herself I could give back to her.

We are like the twins in old fables, each of whom has been given half a key. Cordelia will walk toward me through the opening crowd, a woman of wavering age, dressed in Irish tweed of a muted green, mother-of-pearl earrings circled with gold, beautiful shoes; well-groomed, soignée as they used to say. Taking care of herself, as I am. Her hair will be gently frosted, her smile quizzical. I won’t know who she is.

There are a lot of women in this room, several other painters, some rich people. Mostly it’s the rich people Charna drags over. I shake their hands, watch their mouths move. Elsewhere I have more stamina for these things, these acts of self-exposure; I could brazen them out. But here I feel scraped naked. In the gap between rich people, a young girl pushes her way through. She’s a painter, it goes without saying, but she says it anyway. She’s in a miniskirt and tight leggings and flat clumpy black shoes with laces, her hair is shaved up the back the way my brother’s used to be, a late forties squareboy’s cut. She is post everything, she is what will come after post.

She is what will come after me.

“I loved your early work,” she says. “Falling Women,

I loved that. I mean, it sort of summed up an era, didn’t it?” She doesn’t mean to be cruel, she doesn’t know she’s just relegated me to the dust heap along with crank telephones and whalebone stays. In former days I would have said something annihilating to her, some scabby, scalding remark, but I can’t think of anything right off the bat. I’m out of training, I’m losing my nerve. In any case, what purpose would it serve? Her past-tense admiration is sincere. I should be gracious. I stand there, my grin turning to stone, institutionalized. Eminence creeps like gangrene up my legs.

“I’m glad,” I manage. When in doubt, lie through your teeth. I’m lucky I still have teeth to lie through. I’m standing back to the wall, with a new, full glass of wine. I crane my neck, peering through the crowd, over the well-arranged heads: it’s time for Cordelia to appear, but she has not appeared. Disappointment is building in me, and impatience; and then anxiety. She must have set out, in this direction. Something must have happened to her on the way here.

This goes on while I shake more hands and say more things, and the room gradually clears.

“That went off very well,” says Charna, with a sigh, of relief I think. “You were wonderful.” She’s happy because I haven’t bitten anyone or spilled my drink down their legs, or otherwise acted like an artist.

“How about dinner, with all of us?”

“No,” I say. “No thank you. I’m bone-tired. I think I’ll just go back.” I look around once more: Cordelia is not here.

Bone-tired, an old phrase, of my mother’s. Though bones as such do not get tired. They’re strong, they have a lot of stamina; they can go on for years and years, after the rest of the body has quit. I’m headed for a future in which I sprawl propped in a wheelchair, shedding hair and drooling, while some young stranger spoons mushed food into my mouth and I stand in the snow under the bridge, and stand and stand. While Cordelia vanishes and vanishes.

I go out, into the sidewalk twilight, outside the gallery. I want to take a taxi, but I can barely lift my hand. I’ve been prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence.