Read Online Cast in Doubt by Lynne Tillman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lynne Tillman
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masterpiece, and she is the godmother of Household Gods, so to speak. A vast subject. I can’t bear to think about it just now.
As the years passed, Roger’s peculiarities emerged. He has a strange expression these days, his face having set a bit—he’s ten years younger than I, I think. He never troubles to look one straight in the eye. He has the disconcerting habit of peering at one through half-closed eyes, as if one were under suspicion of a great crime. There is something sinister in him, something that I cannot quite comprehend, but sense. It is as if his suspicions of others were only the reflections of his own dubious nature. I don’t mean to dramatize, but one doesn’t ever know what to expect from Roger, especially because he appears so pulled together and chipper, so in control.
One worsens with age; at the least our failings graduate with us, with age, and some become exaggerated. I’m sure I have gotten worse, although the truth is I’m not sure in just which ways. I’d never admit my failings to others. Obviously I drink too much and lose patience quickly and can be petulant. There’s no one here I trust enough for the kind of dissection I ought to undergo. I almost trust Alicia enough, almost, but her secretiveness produces greater discretion on my part than I truly care to employ. I would like to reveal myself more fully to her. There’s Gwen in Manhattan, though it’s been ages since I’ve seen her. An extraordinary, singular person.
Gwen is from a lower-middle-class black family in Queens, New York. She attended Radcliffe on scholarship, which is where I met her, in Cambridge in the fifties, years after I was graduated from Harvard. Actually she is now close to the age I was when I met her. Gwen is never without something clever to say. It is, as she once said, her best defense, and then in the next breath she went on to dub herself Manhattan’s double entendre. That indeed does suit her, as it begins to define her complex nature. To me she’s the black Dorothy Parker, as she is a great wit, a talented writer of stories and screenplays, does editorial work for a living, and turns out the occasional review or essay when she can rouse herself to it. She drinks and is extremely critical and, even more, is a cynic like Parker and has, like her as well, a penchant for gay men, such as myself, not that she was ever in love with me. I do, did trust her, even though she can be an outrageous gossip, but it’s true to say that, with her, minds do meet. It’s been too long since we last were together. That must be remedied. I’ll write her and invite her here. I’ll offer to pay her way. Yes. I really need to see her.
I find it easier to arrive at my typewriter if first I plan a simple task, such as writing a long-overdue letter. Even paying a bill sometimes unlocks the door to creativity. It’s odd what helps, because the activity is so odd in itself. Dearest Gwen, I write, and so on, and will you come, and so on, and be my guest, and so on, and then I use some of what I’ve written about the sky and the sea, and ask her to join my sunbathing club, and so on. I’m as excited as a pup. Gwen is not in any way doglike or puplike. She is an original, a rare bird, a tan, lithe creature. The color of coffee ice cream, she has said, not brown sugar, a locution that offended her in part because it derived from a song sung by wimpy English boys, as she put it in a letter. She’s writing a screenplay called Dark Angels, whose title comes from a postcard Gwen found in the south. It shows three young black boys in a pastoral setting. At the bottom of the card, which she once showed me, there is a motto: Dark Angels. She hasn’t yet let me see the script.
Gwen is canny as a con man, an art historian gifted with the touch of a grifter. Her postgraduate work was in art history. Will Gwen like Helen? Might they not fall in love, for one Greek moment? But Gwen isn’t really drawn to women. I should
As the years passed, Roger’s peculiarities emerged. He has a strange expression these days, his face having set a bit—he’s ten years younger than I, I think. He never troubles to look one straight in the eye. He has the disconcerting habit of peering at one through half-closed eyes, as if one were under suspicion of a great crime. There is something sinister in him, something that I cannot quite comprehend, but sense. It is as if his suspicions of others were only the reflections of his own dubious nature. I don’t mean to dramatize, but one doesn’t ever know what to expect from Roger, especially because he appears so pulled together and chipper, so in control.
One worsens with age; at the least our failings graduate with us, with age, and some become exaggerated. I’m sure I have gotten worse, although the truth is I’m not sure in just which ways. I’d never admit my failings to others. Obviously I drink too much and lose patience quickly and can be petulant. There’s no one here I trust enough for the kind of dissection I ought to undergo. I almost trust Alicia enough, almost, but her secretiveness produces greater discretion on my part than I truly care to employ. I would like to reveal myself more fully to her. There’s Gwen in Manhattan, though it’s been ages since I’ve seen her. An extraordinary, singular person.
Gwen is from a lower-middle-class black family in Queens, New York. She attended Radcliffe on scholarship, which is where I met her, in Cambridge in the fifties, years after I was graduated from Harvard. Actually she is now close to the age I was when I met her. Gwen is never without something clever to say. It is, as she once said, her best defense, and then in the next breath she went on to dub herself Manhattan’s double entendre. That indeed does suit her, as it begins to define her complex nature. To me she’s the black Dorothy Parker, as she is a great wit, a talented writer of stories and screenplays, does editorial work for a living, and turns out the occasional review or essay when she can rouse herself to it. She drinks and is extremely critical and, even more, is a cynic like Parker and has, like her as well, a penchant for gay men, such as myself, not that she was ever in love with me. I do, did trust her, even though she can be an outrageous gossip, but it’s true to say that, with her, minds do meet. It’s been too long since we last were together. That must be remedied. I’ll write her and invite her here. I’ll offer to pay her way. Yes. I really need to see her.
I find it easier to arrive at my typewriter if first I plan a simple task, such as writing a long-overdue letter. Even paying a bill sometimes unlocks the door to creativity. It’s odd what helps, because the activity is so odd in itself. Dearest Gwen, I write, and so on, and will you come, and so on, and be my guest, and so on, and then I use some of what I’ve written about the sky and the sea, and ask her to join my sunbathing club, and so on. I’m as excited as a pup. Gwen is not in any way doglike or puplike. She is an original, a rare bird, a tan, lithe creature. The color of coffee ice cream, she has said, not brown sugar, a locution that offended her in part because it derived from a song sung by wimpy English boys, as she put it in a letter. She’s writing a screenplay called Dark Angels, whose title comes from a postcard Gwen found in the south. It shows three young black boys in a pastoral setting. At the bottom of the card, which she once showed me, there is a motto: Dark Angels. She hasn’t yet let me see the script.
Gwen is canny as a con man, an art historian gifted with the touch of a grifter. Her postgraduate work was in art history. Will Gwen like Helen? Might they not fall in love, for one Greek moment? But Gwen isn’t really drawn to women. I should
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