NOVEMBER 16, 2011
She climbs the hill to Deb’s cabin, Lena’s notebook tucked in her pocket, and knocks on the door. Through the window she can see Deb rising from the table where she sits, a glass of wine and an open book in front of her.
Deb’s face softens when she sees Vale. “Come into my lair,” she says, moving a pile of books off a chair. “Tea? Water? Wine?”
“Water would be good,” Vale says, sitting.
“I was just reading Grace Paley,” Deb says, bringing Vale a glass, plopping down on the couch. She tucks her legs beneath her, takes a sip of her wine. “My radical poet hero. She keeps me company when the nights are long. Do you know her work?”
“No,” Vale says.
“Ah, you should! Writer of poetry and stories. War resister. Antinuclear activist. She moved to a farmhouse in Vermont in the 1970s and lived a life of poverty. Wrote beautiful things. She valorizes all of this,” Deb says, laughing, nodding toward her books and walls, the bucket under the sink. “Me and my hovel.”
Vale smiles. Pulls Lena’s notebook out of her pocket and hands it to Deb. “I found this. At Lena’s place up the hill.”
Deb takes the journal. Flips through the pages.
“My God. This is spectacular,” she says, fingering the drawings.
“Yes. I had to show someone.”
Deb turns the pages slowly. Takes a deep breath. “Your mother would love to see this, yes?”
“She would,” Vale says, emptying her glass. She stands up, goes to the wall where Deb has posted photographs of artists, writers, musicians. A kaleidoscope of voices keeping her company on this hill through the long haul.
“You know you can always stay here, Vale,” Deb says. “In Danny’s old room.”
“I know. Thank you,” Vale says, looking at a photo of Frida, a bouquet of pink roses atop her head. A photo of Marilyn Monroe in a straw hat and dark leather. “I’m happy where I am.”
VALE STAYS FOR DINNER—BEANS AND RICE, A SALAD OF kale and other late-garden greens—and a movie.
Deb pulls a fourteen-inch TV and a VCR out of the closet. “I still live in the dark ages,” she says, showing Vale the VHS. “The tapes are so cheap to buy online.” She puts in Agnès Varda’s Vagabond, one she says she’s never seen before, and brings over two full glasses of wine. The film starts with slow pans over barren winter fields. Men and distant fires in the French vineyards. String quartet, cello, and suddenly—the discovery of a woman, frozen to death in the roadside drainage ditch.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Deb whispers. “Just what we don’t need. Do you want to turn it off?”
“No,” Vale whispers. She feels gutted. Bonnie in a ditch, tits up. She can’t pull her eyes away: wine stains in the frozen grass beside Mona. Mona’s hair tangled.
The film wanders back in time: Mona quits her job in Paris in order to wander. Along the way she meets a slew of other vagabonds—a Tunisian vineyard worker, a family of goat herders, a professor researching trees. These people who live at the quiet thresholds.
Vale feels remarkably less alone, watching this film. Its refusal to ignore pain or solitude. The screen’s cool light bouncing off the cabin’s dark walls. Mona with the goat herders. Mona with the maid. Mona on the road again, alone.
The cuts are elliptical—the moments strung together without smooth transitions. You have to do the work yourself—piece together this life of Mona. Smoking fields, goatherds, grapevines. The loose strings of violin threading through the room.
When the film ends, Vale can hardly move.
“I’m sorry. That was inappropriate,” Deb says.
“It was beautiful,” Vale say, her stomach in tangles. Her limbs frozen. Mona as Bonnie. Bonnie as Mona. The cabin suddenly too dark and quiet around them.
“Too relevant,” Deb says quietly, “for both of us.”
Vale rarely thinks of Stephen’s death, but she thinks of it now. What it must have been like for Deb, living here, alone, for all these years.
“Our lives are pitiful,” Vale says.
Deb laughs. “Yes. Remarkably so.”
“We need to dance, Deb. Otherwise I think we might die,” Vale says.
Deb smiles. Goes to the wall, slips a record out of a sleeve. “Georges Brassens—my favorite dead French songwriter,” she calls out, setting the needle down.
Vale rises off the couch, closes her eyes, moves her arms in slow motion.
Dancing, she thinks: an occupation of the spirit.
A refusal to give up joy.
“Georges Brassens—the sexy father I never had!” Vale says, opening her eyes again, moving her toes and fingers and arms.
Deb laughs. Closes her eyes. Moves her hips slowly. An old heat there, Vale thinks, watching.