Ruggles replaced Shockula, and after almost three years of extended vacation, he freed me on the condition I live under Hilda’s supervision. Ruggles believed the healthiest place for my soul was beside Alchemy. I sat uncomfortably buckled into the passenger seat as Hilda drove along Route 25 toward Orient. I felt oneness with the fallow fields streaking by. Before I even entered, I sensated the house vaporized with the same fallow air. Still, I was free to love my son. All summer Alchemy bounded about, almost giddy to have me around, the three of us living a near-ordinary life. I could walk anywhere in Orient whenever and wherever, eat when I got hungry, climb to the roof of the house and commune with the moon. Go to the movies. Have sex! Only, Hilda’s wary gaze seemed to follow me everywhere. I was not going to spend my life decaying in Orient, nor ever again would I part from Alchemy.
Nathaniel, “rehabilitated” and released from prison, remained on probation. In his letters, he’d been pressing me to move in with him to his apartment on 3rd Street between First and Second Avenues. Xtine had a steady girlfriend. Even if she hadn’t, full-time coparenting didn’t suit her, and the Chelsea would not be Ruggles’s idea of an ideal home. Before we could move anywhere, I had to win Ruggles’s approval and find out from Bicks Sr. what legal rights Hilda possessed to keep Alchemy from me.
Another condition of my release ordered therapy with a New York mindsucker chosen by Ruggles, which afforded me an excuse to go into the city every week. I would vamp around for the day and take the last bus back. A few months after my release, I spent four days with Nathaniel. On our second night, he dressed up in his “courtroom suit,” hair patted down, gray-brown goatee trimmed neat. He planned an evening not exactly in keeping with the revolutionary who believed dinner at the Odessa verged on extravagant. We stopped at the Barclay for a drink and imbibed the waterfall-like playing of an underfed harpsichordist. As we strolled up Fifth Avenue to the Top of the Sixes for dinner, at a corner newsstand Nathaniel eyed a Post headline lauding Reagan. I waited for his usual tirade, but instead, he clapped his hands. “No politics tonight. Promise.”
Near the end of the evening, both of us tipsy doodle—he even danced with me during “Night and Day”—he placed his hands flat on the table. “Salome, we should think about getting married.” I gagged on my champagne. He quickly handed me a napkin and added, “for practical reasons.”
“Nathaniel, I’m the paragon of impracticality.”
“That’s why I love you and why I’m prepared to wait. I agree with you that ‘marriage’ is often a codified ritual that keeps a woman subordinate to a man. You don’t need to answer now.” He began twirling his napkin, his legs wriggling like a Saint Vitus’ dance sufferer. Marriage would undermine Hilda’s claims to Alchemy. (Though, he joked, a convicted felon and a “certifiable” might not make the ideal couple in family court.)
I tried not to cry. I couldn’t help myself. I swilled my champagne, thinking, What response would hurt him least?
“Oh, Nathaniel”—I hiccupped between sobs—“I love you so.”
“As well you should.” He deadpanned.
“I can’t promise you monogamy.” I couldn’t admit that I’d been occasionally sexing it up with one of the stud fishermen I’d met in Orient, and two weeks before I’d checked out the scene at Studio 54. Studio’s odor smelled of a snooty Philistine profligacy, not democratic Dionysian freedom. I made sport with a coltish South American tennis player there. After three years of celibacy, nothing could put a damper on my libido.
“I’m not asking for it, nor am I promising it to you. We’ll practice a polyamorous lifestyle.”
“I’ll make your life more than a little untidy.” That was one massive understatement. “And I’ll always be a liability.”
“Life is a risk. You think I want safety? Look at my life. Your instability is my stability. Do you think I don’t know who and what you are?”
“And who and what do you think I am?”
“A selfish, out-to-lunch artist with a heart as big and soft … as a marble.”
He made me laugh. I loved him and wanted to be with him—most of the time. He believed he could accept my flighty ways and catch me before I stumbled. He was the right father for Alchemy. Male artists throughout history had wives and mistresses—why not start a new trend?
I took his clammy right hand between mine. “Let’s live together first. When I’m ready, I’ll propose to you.”
What could he do but acquiesce? I redecorated his shabby two-bedroom walk-up. Alchemy helped me paint the walls bright red and blue and hang yellow velvet curtains over the windows. I brought in fresh flowers and began picking up furnishings at thrift stores. Yes, I became nesty. But nests are not built to last forever.
When Bicks Sr. arrived from Florida a few months later, we met for dinner at the Café des Artistes, his favorite eatery just around the corner from his apartment.
“You’re looking hardy.” His voice strove for effervescence yet limped out ruptured and hoarse.
“I most certainly am.” Unlike him. Beneath his usual sartorial uniform of bow tie, vest, pressed suit, and shined shoes, he looked less lifelike than a rotting wax museum mannequin.
“Salome, don’t tell me what your expression is saying. I look sickly because I am.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t get sentimental. It’s not like you. I’ve had a good, long run.”
“Okay, Bicks. Question, then. If I marry Nathaniel, will that get me out from your son’s control when you …”
“Die? Probably not. Which leads me to a serious bit of business. Your time in Collier Layne has drained your trust to a low level. We made some nice deals on the land that was once your father’s farm. We have no other source of replenishment.”
“Which means?”
“Though small, the monthly stipend you received before is being withheld.”
“In case you decide to send me back to the brain-burn unit?”
“It will not be my decision. But yes, if you must return.” I appreciated Bicks’s honesty—honesty within limits, at least. “Irrespective of your financial situation, you should marry Nathaniel if you love him. Other impediments can be overcome.” The old undercover swisher understood my needs better than most.
“Speaking of fathers, you know that Lively came to see me at Collier Layne?”
“No, no, I didn’t.” He adjusted his hearing aids.
“Don’t get your diapers in a knot.” I decided to test his limited honesty. “Something in his Bible Belt forthrightness forced him to fess up that Marcel Duchamp and Greta had a quicksilver assignation that produced me.”
His cheeks puckered, and I thought he might spit out his foie gras.
“Miss Garbo never revealed that information to me.”
“That my father was Duchamp, or someone else?”
“Neither. I never asked and she never volunteered.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if she had, would you? Don’t bother to answer.”
“You’re not going to try to stalk her again, are you?”
“I wouldn’t call wanting to meet my mother ‘stalking,’ and no, I don’t want to see her.” I pulled out a brand-new red beret and handed it to him. “This is for her. She’ll understand. Promise me that she’ll get it.” He nodded.
Inside I’d taped a picture of Alchemy and written on the back of it, “Now we’re even.”