Benefit, p.20
Benefit, page 20
I sent her an email of thanks and she responded with capital letters and exclamation points: “It was SO great seeing you! Judith loves you and she doesn’t love ANYONE. Also, Ronnie is mildly obsessed, I think?” I had seen no evidence of either reaction. “We’ll have to do it again soon. Tell me what you’re up to!!” I archived that email without responding, but two weeks later, in my cubicle at Royce, I unarchived it. This was the day Lois called. One of the deliverables in our grant asked us to involve other schools; this would help students, in the end, and it was my job to help them. I wrote back to Greta.
incident
I waited for the proposal. Lois stood with hands folded, her small feet turned out to a woolly first position in those wide gray shoes. “I’ll answer your questions. You said you had questions. If I can answer them.” She tilted her head again, looking at me. “And I sketch as we talk.”
“Sketch?”
“Yes yes.”
“Sketch me.”
“You object?”
“I, uh—”
“You’re not a model.” She waved her hand. “Good. I don’t like hiring models. A waste of time and money. I prefer to take advantage of a situation when it comes. Real people. Serendipity.”
“But—”
“Don’t worry; no one will recognize you.” She pointed to the wall of paintings. “In my work, a human figure is just the beginning.”
“I see that.”
“So. Would you like some water? I should have asked. Seltzer? Tea?” She was already assembling a pad and pencil, moving around her easel, clipping something up. “Something to eat?”
“No, I’m fine.”
She glanced up for a moment. “Of course you’re allowed to refuse. Not everyone can stand to be looked at.”
character
I had a picture of the applicant—dark eyes looking out from a fringe of dark bangs—clipped to a printed-out pdf of his application essay, what the form called a “personal statement.” I had those documents in a shiny folder in my backpack. The folder also contained a copy of Florence’s engagement photo, the only photo of her I had, a list of the boxes I had searched in the Dawes collection, the torn-off sheet of notes from the workshop that morning, and an article I’d haphazardly noticed about sugar in the European Union. The problem with never admitting what you are doing, I thought, the problem with never identifying what you are doing, is that you can never get better at it. The folder was the one I’d been given by the publicist at the Weatherfield factory. I think her business card was still tucked into the slit in the pocket. It was a sturdy folder, and I don’t like to waste things.
incident
Greta’s email: “And if that person doesn’t respond, just pester me and I will pester them!! I am good at email pestering. But forgetful. I think my New Year’s resolution will be to answer emails on time. Honest. 2012 is the year for a better me.”
character
The seats were mostly full when I arrived for the talk, mostly rustling with easy time-killing chatter. I could see Justin at the front of the room, in jeans and a blazer, listening to a woman in a neat black dress. The talk was held in a private library near midtown that I hadn’t known existed before now, lined on four sides with bookshelves running to the ceilings, two rolling ladders promising ascent to the upper reaches, rimmed wooden trays around waist height proffering magazines and journals. In one corner were the long mahogany rods on which newspapers could rest like dignified indoor versions of drying bedsheets. Chairs had been positioned in a series of shallow arcs, as if up-and-down rows were too severe; the program hosting Justin was called “Contemporary Conversations.” Soon the woman in black cleared her throat and everyone settled into silence. Our speaker, the woman in black reminded us, was one of the most important and inspiring voices of our day on issues of race and culture, and they were so pleased to welcome him, a journalist and author, a Weatherfield fellow … When she folded up the paper on which she had written details of his biography, she began the applause, awkwardly, into the microphone; she stepped back and Justin waved away the clapping, thanking her. He set down his own small sheaf on the podium and waited for the sound to fade. He told the audience that he had trouble believing introductions; he was off to the side, he said, listening, “like who the hell is that guy?” Laughter. The hell signaled already that he was daring enough to curse, or almost curse: He was not the speaker one thought he was, except that the speaker who was not who one thought he was was exactly the speaker he was invited to be. The audience, ready, appreciated the place to which hell had sent them, a place where they would not have to stay alert to feel the pleasure of being rebellious. I would not have to stay alert. I was part of the audience. Justin continued, still seemingly extemporizing—he hadn’t looked at his notes—that he had a theory that a little bit of your own opinion of yourself was mostly still stuck in high school, and his high school career—well, put it this way, his high school career was the type after which guidance counselors suggest a year off so you can “find yourself.” “Find yourself,” he repeated, when what they really meant was find someone else, someone who could maybe do what he was told and turn in an assignment on time, be that person for a change—Justin giving an impression of a concerned guidance counselor, straitlaced and wrong, while the audience chuckled, nodding. They had been there. Or they wanted to have been there, because it meant they were here with Justin, now, in the obvious ease of his success, proving that guidance counselor wrong, proving wrong everyone who thought the path to success was doing what one was told to do. Justin was good at this. Anyway, he continued easily, “See, that’s sort of what I want to talk to you about—finding yourself.” He fingered the paper. This was the real talk. No, it was all the real talk. “This may be the next book,” Justin confided to us. He wasn’t sure. The not being sure was also the real talk. He leaned forward over the podium, arms at the lower left and upper right corners and elbows almost extended, a position of relaxed command. “It’s a weird phrase, isn’t it, ‘finding yourself.’” The audience nodded again, agreeing, as if they could assume as their own Justin’s obvious intelligence and grace, the modesty and seriousness of his position. “And identity, a weird concept.” Justin’s voice kept moving forward—he barely looked down at his paper—through a summary of different philosophical projects related to that weird concept, through a revelatory contrast of Rousseau and Fanon, through a discussion of slave narratives and a skeptical but respectful analysis of the rise of the scientific process, through mentions of Charles Taylor and Kwame Anthony Appiah, through an opposition of Obama’s autobiography and Augustine’s Confessions that was also unexpected and, as far as I could take it all in among his quickly passing phrases, also revelatory. “We often assume,” he began after a pause to sip water, but then smiled and stopped himself and talked about how sloppy it was to use the word we. He would take that segue, he said. Why not. He talked about the problems of politics as such. The audience nodded. They seemed to appreciate the way Justin included them all in both the accusers and the accused. Included us all. I was part of the audience. Justin was circling back now through thinkers and writers he had mentioned, pointing out the problem of collectivity and individuality, the problem and the necessities—he wasn’t going to pretend this was something that could be solved. But he wasn’t going to pretend that we shouldn’t go on trying to solve it. He looked down, then up. “That’s all I’ve got, folks.” The applause was long and appreciative. Justin smiled and stepped back from the podium and made a little “Okay, stop, you’re embarrassing me now” wave to the clapping so that the moderator could begin the question and answer period. I think I read, once, about a psychology study that found how hard it is not to return a smile. The response is innate. Could that be right? The questions were starting. “What do you say,” asked someone in the first row, “about the charge that identity politics means more and more division? Do we need to exaggerate our differences? Do we need to split ourselves into smaller and smaller groups?” “What do you say,” asked someone near the back, “about the fact that self-discovery is a privilege some people can’t afford?” “What do you say,” asked a hesitant elderly woman near the front, “about people who don’t want to be labeled at all? Isn’t that the case? Some people don’t want to be labeled?” The questions didn’t seem to be responding to what Justin had just explained. Perhaps they weren’t supposed to. Justin didn’t seem to expect anything different. He started with how good the questions were. He thought more differences meant more points of contact, too, and he didn’t think it was a zero-sum game. He thought solidarity wasn’t about reducing our complexity, but extending our empathy. He absolutely acknowledged the importance of material circumstances but didn’t want to reduce identity to a privilege, something you get to do after you take care of the real stuff, because, he said, identity was the real stuff. “You know, I just want people to be able to be themselves,” Justin said. The moderator stepped in. “I think that’s a good place to end,” she said. The audience agreed. Most were ready to go. They had what they’d come for. Applause once more, briefly this time, as people began to collect coats, gloves, the ends of scarves, already confirming to those sitting next to them and with whom they’d come that this had been a really good talk, hadn’t it? Yes. A few people approached Justin at the front of the room: They had another thought to offer, a reference to confirm; they had the name of a friend of a friend they needed to drop. I waited at the back. I didn’t know if Justin had seen me, and I didn’t think I would try to see him. I thought about the last moments of his talk. Do I just want people to be themselves? Well, I thought to myself. Why would I not want that?
incident
I said to Lois, “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Yes yes,” she said. She never doubted my agreement. She clapped her hands together with a brisk “Let’s get started” demeanor.
“Where should I stand? Sit?”
character
“The biggest mistake I see, over and over again,” Dan told us, shaking his head a little in regret, “is that students think success is about numbers. Quantity. Well, it’s quality, folks. It’s all about quality. It’s all about narrative.”
incident
“That went okay?” Justin said. We were in a dull, dark bar near Times Square. The first one Justin saw. He ordered Manhattans and a cheese plate while muttering anger at someone in his texts; he wanted to know how many minutes of human existence people wasted in little half hours after 5:00 P.M. waiting for others to show up, in this fucking city at least. “You think that went okay?” His question the first words for a while directed surely at me. I forgot how Justin could make rudeness seem like intimacy. “My talk, I mean.”
“It went more than okay,” I said. “It went well.”
“You can be honest.”
“They loved you.”
“All right, let’s not get carried away.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Who said I was worried?”
“No one.”
He relaxed a little and unwrapped his scarf. “Yeah, it was fine. I was surprised you came. How did you know about this?”
“You told me.”
“Oh.” He looked up. “Right.”
“I was in the city anyway.”
“More research?”
“No, that’s over.”
He raised an eyebrow, momentarily interested. “You quit?”
character
Lois told me to stand near the window. To relax. “Yes yes, look out, that gaze, that’s good, try to keep that. But don’t think too much about me drawing. Let the moment achieve itself. It’s best if you just ignore the process altogether.”
“I see.”
“Yes yes. Don’t worry. I do this all the time. Now we can talk. Florence. I only knew her for a very few years, of course, at the end of her life. What year did she die?”
“Um—1947.” She was behind me, to one side; I couldn’t see her. Would I feel more or less awkward, speaking to someone I couldn’t see? My view was the small courtyard of Lois’s building, a window opposite, a hint of dingy wintry sky through the gap in the buildings. “August.”
“I was six.”
“Right. Your brother was ten.” Less awkward. I didn’t have to react. I was being sketched. This must be what psychoanalysis is like, I thought.
Lois said, “You have all the facts, don’t you.”
“All I could find. Very few. That’s why I’m here.”
“Yes yes.” Lois sounded pleased at that. “Well, she was quite old when I knew her.” I tried to do the math in my head; she wasn’t that much older than Lois now—I didn’t say this. Lois continued: “And I was very young. So I don’t remember much. Children are not very observant, you know. People who know nothing about observation are always saying children are wonderfully observant, that artists should train their minds to be young again. That’s nonsense. Children are mostly absorbed in themselves. Hmm.” She paused briefly; some complication had emerged in the sketch. “In general my memory is very good.”
I said, “I’m not surprised.”
“It’s true I don’t see much point in dwelling on the past. I have always been a rather future-oriented person.”
“Well, you can’t—”
“Yes yes.” She wasn’t finished. “Added to which my parents and I were estranged for much of my life.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It doesn’t have to mean anything tragic. Some people don’t like each other. And sometimes those people are related. That’s how I look at this question.”
“Uh—right.” I shifted my weight just a little. I tried not to move.
“My mother hated her parents, too. Alas, she couldn’t admit it.” Lois made a small sigh. “They treated her awfully, yes yes, but still.” A pause. I wasn’t sure of the implication. But still, despite awful treatment, she should admit her hatred? “My father didn’t help. He just wanted the money.”
“Right.”
“My mother never thought we had enough. Anxious. Grasping. Such a horrible quality. And so silly. There was plenty.”
Her tone implied there is always plenty. I wondered if Lois’s estrangement included an estrangement from the family money. “Right,” I said. Who was I to talk.
“When you called I remembered that box from the basement and I did go and fetch it up. Clippings, I think. Someone sent it to me after she died. My mother, I mean. I suppose there is no one else.”
“Clippings?” I did turn my head at that, a little, before remembering. “Sorry.” I looked back again at empty courtyard and blank sky. To that view I said, “These are family papers?”
“Something like that. I’ve only just glanced. It seems quite random. Don’t expect much.”
“Is there anything in there from Florence?”
“Oh yes, Florence,” Lois said, as if I were slightly rude or tiresome for bringing the conversation back to its ostensible subject. “Perhaps. I doubt it. It’s all right over there,” she added, oblivious to the fact that her gestures indicating direction meant nothing to me when I could not, posing, turn my head.
“Could I—could I look at the papers? Would you mind?”
incident
I did not quit, I told Justin. I explained about the project. His essay, I told him.
“Really? Shit. Sorry, I guess. Wait, should I be sorry?”
“It’s better this way.”
“Yeah. Good.” Justin was done with that topic. “You think it was too long, the talk? Too short? Come on. You’re holding something back.”
character
Lois said she would not mind. “You can tell me what’s there. If there’s anything of value. I suppose some old papers are valuable, right?”
“Um—maybe. Some.”
“Ah, that gesture you just made. Wonderful. Yes yes.”
I wasn’t aware of having made a gesture. I scrambled for something to say. I was supposed to be asking her questions about Florence.
“Now,” Lois said. “Tell me the rest of what you know about my great-aunt.”
incident
I told Justin no, I was not holding anything back. “I was going to say—I was surprised by all the philosophy.”
“You were surprised I quoted so many white people.”
“Ah—maybe.” And to his look: “All the ideas? No, that’s not right—”
“Yeah, you’re just digging the hole deeper.” Justin smiled. He enjoyed my discomfort. “It’s fine, don’t worry.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Not really, but it doesn’t matter.” He pointed at the last piece of cheese on the plate in front of us. “Try that one. It’s good.”
I ignored him. “I just didn’t think you were interested in ideas.”
“Put the honey stuff on top.”
“I thought it was people,” I continued. “No, you take it. I don’t like sweet things.”
“Everyone likes sweet things.” He shook his head. “It’s biological. All these women telling me they don’t like sweet things. It doesn’t make you a worse person or something.”
“Wow.” I smeared a brown pearl of honey on the slice of cheese I was holding.
“Plus it’s honey; it’s natural and shit.”
“You’re kind of a bully.”
“Where did you get that I wasn’t interested in ideas?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was dumb. Tell me something.”
He didn’t respond. He was looking at his phone.
“Have you ever taken a writing class?”
