Then the elevator door closes. And the elevator is borne silently away, upward.
Graice screams.
It is the great terror of her life: lost on the seventh floor of the Osborne Building, and Persia borne away somewhere above, and there is nothing but the corridor stretching off, rows of office doors, opaque glass set in the doors, the air smelling of medicine, disinfectant, dust.
She's crying Mommy, Mommy. are duced within seconds to anguish she runs back to the elevator door but the elevator is gone, Persia is gone; she stands there stunned not knowing what to do.
sobbing helplessly.
Somewhere down the corridor a door opens sharply: a man with a gleaming head peers out. peers at her. but he withdraws almost immediately, doesn't want any part of Graice Court they, bad bad girl how can you be so bad!
She's four years old. She's going to die.
She blames the navy blue suit with the flared skirt Persia is wearing, the dressy look Persia has for this Saturday morning visit to the dentist's; most of all she blames Persia's high heeled shoes, the white and tan leather shoes, the special pair. special gift from Daddy One day they were walking on Main Street and Persia noticed the new spring shoe fashions in a window and pointed at a pair of shoes saying there, that's for me, just joking naturally because these shoes are expensive but before she can get her breath Duke Courtney has hustled her inside, before she can figure out what is going on the shoes are hers.
Says Persia, laughing, You know why? The crazy fool just came from his bookie, that's why. He'd won his bet and never even let on.
Says Persia, Sweetie, this is a serious task. I mean serious.
Handing Graice the little brush, the little shoe polish brush, it's the white polish you apply to the beautiful high heeled shoes set atop a sheet of newspaper on the kitchen table. Be careful not to splash any white on the tan part, says Persia; if you're going to do this for Mommy you'd better do it right.
Graice's hand trembles just a little.
Graice's hand trembles but she concentrates on the task, she's so careful she forgets to breathe, and the white polish doesn't splash on the tan part of the shoe, and Persia sees what a good job she's done and kisses her on the nose, says, Hey you're smart! My special little sweetie.
By the time Persia pushes through the door marked FIRE EXIT at the end of the corridor Graice is weeping quietly. hopelessly. She's standing rooted to the spot in front of the elevator, never looking around until Persia whistles at her, that sharp shrieking comical whistle that's Daddy's whistle too; then she turns, astonished, sees Persia advancing toward her out of nowhere like one of the creatures in the movie cartoons where any surprise is possible, any abrupt change of fortune, any appearance or disappearance, any maiming, any metamorphosis, any transcendent happy ending, any humiliation or nightmare or hilarity, and she rushes head on at Persia, sobbing violently, and Persia is so guilt stricken and moved by the child's grief she forgets she'd meant to give her a good hard slap on her bottom; she stoops and hugs her, stoops sighing and hugs her, wipes her tear streaked snot streaked face with a Kleenex, Did you really think your mommy went away and left you? kissing her, hoisting her up in her arms, Did you re ally think that? Did you? Silly little Graice?
* * *
Momma?
It's just dawn. It's no day and no season she can name.
Her mother's arms have vanished. Her mother's heated face, her mother's sighing kiss, vanished.
She's an adult woman. in an adult woman's body.
She's lying paralyzed in a bed not known to her in a room and a place not known to her, exhausted from her dreaming as if she has fallen from a great height. unable to re call where she is or why, except she knows she isn't home.
After some minutes the world rolls back. As the world always does.
Graice Courtney tells herself: she's in Syracuse, New York; she's in her bed in her rented room on South Salina Street; she's safe, she's successful, she's supremely happy; there's a man who imagines he's in love with her though she can't, for a few perplexed seconds, remember his name.
A wet autumn morning, a garbage truck clattering down in the street.
The first snowfall of the season , blossom sized flakes falling languidly and melting on the ground, a premature snowfall delicate as lace, rapidly melting.
e says, How beautiful you are, Graice. but you must know it.
He says, Your face is a Botticelli face. but you must know it.
He says, I'm very attracted to you. but you must know it.
He is kind; Graice Courtney hasn't been deceived.
And gentle in his touch, not demanding, not in fact very confident, as if, though ten years older than she, he's in a way less experienced, more cautious, choosing his words with care as if fearing that even the most ordinary of words might betray him, or offend her.
He's a gentleman; he respects her virginity.
How happy I am, Graice re cords in her journal, her now shabby journal whose early dog eared pages she'll one day tear out withoutare reading.
Alan is exactly as missis Savage promised except perhaps sweeter Sometimes when she's too restless to sit at her desk she stoops over to write. Tonight was a typically lovely evening at the Savages'.
Alan was so warm so funny so well spoken so affectionate. Where once, and not so very long ago, Graice's handwriting was crabbed and minuscule now it has become gay, capricious, marked by swashes and flourishes. He says he loves me HOW HAPPY I AM sometimes filling the re st of the line or even the page with the squiggly marks with which one fills out the space on a personal check, after the numerals.
At Skaneateles Lake, the morning after they'd first met, Alan Savage proposed to Graice Courtney that, if she was interested, he teach her to sail.
It's sailing, he said, not swimming, that's the true transcendental experience.
They could use the Savages' old twelve foot sailboat, which Alan had loved so, as a boy. Which he missed, his many summers away from home.
Graice said, after a moment's hesitation, yes she'd like that.
Graice smiled happily and said yes she'd like that.
She chose to ignore how the young man stared at her, smiling but clearly uneasy in her presence. not knowing what to think of her or whether he should think of her at all.
But Graice reasoned She can't have told him anything but good of me: what else but good of me has she seen?
Down at the dock, setting up sail and for nearly two hours afterward on the lake, they exchanged very few words: Alan Savage called out directions; Graice Courtney made every effort to obey. Like children, they did a good deal of scrambling about the deck, and breathless laughing. The wind was up moderately, the sky clear, the sun bright as a heated coin.
Within minutes the Savages' house was hardly more than a white blur on shore.
Graice discovered that she liked sailing, liked it very much; surely it was obvious to Alan Savage how much she liked it, how happily she smiled, their eyes hooking onto each other's sometimes as if by accident. The tyranny of the sail before the tyranny of the wind.
nothing simpler.
Hair whipping in the wind she cried to Alan Savage, It is it is a transcendental experience, just like you said!
By the time they brought the sailboat in Alan Savage was enough at ease with Graice Courtney to say, jokingly, with his quick shyly aggressive smile and the habitual downcasting of his eyes that was seemingly a sort of tic with him, Too damn bad, my mother found you first.
e doesn't mean it, though.
He telephones Graice immediately after Labor Day, when he and his parents have re turned to Syracuse, and arranges to meet her: takes her to dinner at a restaurant in the city for an evening quite deliberately not shared with the elder Savages. When Graice inquires after them he says, smiling, an edge of impatience to his voice, You see my parents often enough, Graice, don't you? It isn't necessary for us to talk about them tonight, or even think about them. Look: we've just met.
I've walked in this place, seen you sitting here; I've come over.
Hello.
He's grinning like a boy. Reaching over the table to grip her hand in his, hard, and shake it.
Graice thinks, How strange he is.
She says, What a good idea.
He says, I think it's a good idea.
Though two hours later when they're sitting in his parked car in front of the rooming house on South Salina, talking quietly, not touching after the impulsive handshake Alan Savage hasn't touched Graice Courtney except to help her with her coat , he does shift to the subject of the elder Savages, as if unable finally to resist He says, My parents are very fond of you, as you must know. You're particularly close to my mother, I think?
Graice says quickly, Your mother has been very kind to me.
At once, her eyes begin to fill with tears.
Alan Savage watches her closely, perhaps suspiciously. Has she?
Really? In what way?
Various ways.
Graice speaks so softly, Alan asks her to re peat what she's said.
He says half in protest, But you've been very kind to her.
Visiting her in the hospital, and at home; it meant a great deal to her. Especially since my sister. He pauses, re considering.
Then, in a different tone, his clumsy jocular tone, Are you the sort of person one should be kind to? he asks. Somehow you don't give that impression.
Graice says, hurt, What do you mean?
I mean that there are some people, men and women, more often women, who give the impression of not requiring anything from anyone. Who seem impervious, detached. Like works of art that are simply there and don't re quire anyone to confirm their worth. He pauses. He's breathing audibly, flexing and clenching his fingers. Graice thinks swiftly, He dislikes women. When I first saw you the other day, after hearing so much about you from my mother, I wasn't prepared for your beauty, I must admit! You have a Botticelli face, the face of Venus or one of the faces of Spring, such strange dreamy detached faces set atop their bodies their incongruous fleshy bodies.
Graice's eyes are brimming with tears but she begins laughing suddenly, and her laughter is harsh. Is that how I seem to you! she says.
Alan Savage stares at her in astonishment. A glimmer of oncoming headlights illuminates her contorted face.
* * *
Next day, Graice Courtney is on her way out of the house at 7:55 A.
M.
when the telephone rings in the front parlor, and the call is for her: Alan Savage calling to apologize.
He's a poor judge of character, he says, his eye is mesmerized by surfaces.
Graice? Will you give me another chance?
How happy HOW HAPPY I AM. You didn't think, did you, that I COULD BE SO HA PP Y He touches her, they're lovers. If not completely.
His touch is caressing, lingering. something melancholy in It. In the midst of talk of other, more personal matters, he'll break off to tell her about one of the subjects of his professional research: Marcel Duchamp, for instance, who turned from art to chess and became so obsessed with chess he wanted to transcend mere winning in order to comprehend the phenomenon of chess.
Or he tells her of Man Ray, who, when his mistress Lee Miller left him, revenged himself upon her by breaking her up : that is, fragmenting visual re presentations of parts of her body and using them in his art.
Of course, says Alan Savage, seemingly with utter conviction, the artist's supreme re venge is his art.
Sometimes as if in frustration he grips her head in his hands, frames her face between his spread fingers, kisses her, shyly yet hungrily.
It's as if he is kissing a work of art, a work of exquisite beauty, his face so close to hers Graice Courtney can't see it, has no need of seeing it.
One evening Alan says, I'm very attracted to you, Graice. but you must know it. His downcast gaze, his faintly reddened face, throat.
missis Savage once chanced to re mark that her son had her sensitive skin: he's susceptible to hives, rashes, wheals that mysteriously flare up and as mysteriously subside.
It's as if this quick witted man has been presented with a puzzle, a riddle of sorts, and can't comprehend it. Thus there is an undercurrent of accusation in his voice, subtle yet to Graice Courtney's ear unmistakable as the melodic southern accent beneath the harsher nasal vowels of upstate New York.
Graice smiles; Graice says brightly, Well. I feel the same way about Alan Savage says, No, you don't.