Only Love

Denial is powerful. Like a drug, it blocks reality. If you listen to your truths, like a soldier escaping from battle, you can save yourself. In the name of love, I didn’t. Let me tell you my story.

It was 1960. I was nineteen, and a virgin. I married a “catch” as Mother said. Charley was rich, ten years older, and handsome. I couldn’t wait to get out of my parent’s angry house. He was my rescue, but on my wedding night Charley refused to consummate our marriage. He said he “made a mistake,” and took me home. A week later he sued me for fraud, claiming that I was frigid and refused to let him touch me, and he wanted an annulment. He won. During the subsequent scandal, desperate to prove to my enraged, humiliated, mother who blamed me, on re-bound, I married a twenty-four-year-old real estate developer. We moved into a beautiful suburban five-acre home. Quickly, to show that Charley had lied, I got pregnant, and had two daughters. But I didn’t like marriage and hated the suburbs — the endless barbecues, carpet samples, and my husband was a raging drunk. Not knowing how to parent, feeling numb, I gave my girls to my husband’s mother for days, sometimes weeks. At the San Francisco Museum I became a docent, and voraciously, I read art books and enrolled in art history classes at the nearby junior college. One hot summer day, at my new portable typewriter, I wrote the first line to my novel. From then on everyday as if a hidden voice was dictating what to write, I spent years writing this novel. When I was writing, I felt alive but most of the time I felt as if half of me went somewhere else. I felt disconnected from my husband and family. Until he divorced me.

By then it was 1970. I moved to San Francisco, and rented a small flat in North Beach. By day I worked at a bank dreaming of going to college and becoming an important writer. I left the girls with babysitters or with their Grandparents and I felt no conscious awareness that they were now labeled from a “broken home,” and their father had stopped calling.

A year later I was fired. I was broke. The PG&E was turned off. My phone was turned off. I borrowed money from my mother. My father had died suddenly on the lot at Universal. One rainy cold San Francisco afternoon, my girls at their Grandparents, a tall handsome man with dark skin and silver hair and eyes the color of cornflowers, rang my doorbell. His name was Bob. He owned the car dealership where I had leased my royal blue Pacer. He came to repossess my car. I cried that I needed the car to drive my four-year old to nursery school, and that I would borrow the money. He noticed my painting of a woman with a hat and liked it. He collected art, he said. We went to lunch. He was from Norway and worked all his life in the car business. I confided that I hoped to go to graduate school and be a famous author. Six weeks later, we married. He saved my life. Immediately, I enrolled at San Francisco State University. I majored in art history, and creative writing. I planned on getting my masters of art in creative writing. I planned on becoming a well known author and publishing my novel that would reveal the truth about Charley.

Years passed. It was 1976. Bob and I had been married for seven years. On weekends, Bob and I and the girls went to art galleries, museums, and often visited artist studios. To support the struggling, unknown, artists, I began taking rich docent ladies to the artists’ studios. I began selling selling art. Sometimes, instead of a commission, I’d take a piece of art. Our flat filled with art. I loved the artists, their dedication, belief in themselves. They ahad no interest in the world I had been programmed for — marriage, lunches with girlfriends, Brownie troops, piano lessons. Unless I was writing or painting or looking at art, I felt numb. As if part of me had disconnected and lived somewhere else.

The years passed in routine. My oldest daughter got a scholarship to NYU, to study film, and I got my masters of fine arts in creative writing. One of my professors loved my novel so much he set me up with a prominent literary agent. It wasn’t finished. I was obsessed in finding why Charley had married me, only to destroy me. Until I figured this out I couldn’t find an ending. The literary agent said when I finished the novel, he would represent it. I was thrilled, but I couldn’t find an ending. So I concentrated on selling art and began to be known as a private dealer of unknown artists. I was also making money. I followed every show, and read every art magazines. In Art Forum, I read about a dealer of contemporary art who was bringing New York art to his new San Francisco Gallery. At sixteen he worked in Leo Castelli’s gallery in New York, swept floors, made payments on art until he put together a warehouse of New York important art. I called him. I introduced myself and said that I was a “private dealer.” Could I sell his art on consignment? Could I meet him? See his art? He said that his new gallery was under construction. He had little time, but he’d interview me at his home the next afternoon. His voice was deep, arrogant, and confident.

*

The story starts here.

I park my car in front of a tall gray Victorian house. It’s winter and leaves blow along the San Francisco hills, like parched stars. I rush up the crooked steps, my high heel boots clicking the pavement. I wear one of Bob’s gray dotted silk neckties with a white blouse and a black fitted jacket. I take a deep breath and ring the doorbell. I hear impatient fast footsteps and the door opens.

You take my breath away. You stand there like you own the ground. Everything about you is different — your long pale face, emotional mouth, red wavy hair, and slight beard. Even the way you dress — -baggy army pants, black cashmere turtleneck, a wide silver bracelet on your thin wrist. “You’re late,” you say, impatiently. “Traffic,” I murmur, following you into your gray Victorian. A woman reclines on a living room sofa, her long hair dangling over the edge, like painted silk. By her profile, I can tell she’s beautiful. You walk fast, your weed thin body forward, as if in a hurry. The halls are surrounded by art, paintings, sculptures, I’ve only seen in art magazines or at museum exhibits.

You gesture to a white leather Barcelona chair. You remain standing. I give you my bio, and a packet of slides of art I recently sold. Quickly, you read the bio. Then your long fingers hold the slides high to the light. You frown: “This is miner art,” you snap. “I’m not interested in struggling artists. I sell major art.” You give me the slides and bio back. You shrug. “So you majored in art history? Creative writing?”

I nod. “Yes, I’ve written a novel.

Your Van Gogh face brightens. As if I passed some test, you pontificate that your gallery is about “New York major art,” and that the San Francisco Bay Area only knows from “Ceramic frogs and plates.” You plan on opening more galleries. “I want to own the State,” you say, as if it’s a given you will. ” You glance at your watch. You will “try out,” my skills. You are getting married and when you return from your honeymoon, you want me to go to your gallery and you will show me what pieces you want to sell. “We’ll see what you can do.”

You turn and walk ahead. Hoping that you don’t see the disappointment on my face, I follow you to the door. Outside, I hurry down the steps, to my car. My life has changed forever.

You hired me. A year has passed. I spend hours at your gallery. Bob and I go to all your shows. Your shows are monumental. Bob is making payments on a Robert Mangold painting and you said he has an “eye.” I have sold a few pieces from your gallery. I admire your relentless ambition. I want what you have. I want recognition, visibility, to be important. I block out everything else. Though shy, I cold call powerful wealthy patrons. Recently Recently, I cold called a wealthy corporate giant and sold him your Richard Tuttle painting. You ask me to come to the gallery so you can give me a commission check.

When I arrive, you are in your glass office, on the phone. Your long legs stretched out in front of you, the light from the skylight highlights your hair like burnished copper. You are shouting at someone, your arrogant voice echoing your five thousand square foot gray concrete gallery. Assistants in their offices, are on the phone. As I watch you, I know that from the first time I met you that I love you in a way I have never loved a man. At the same time, I know loving you is dangerous and i feel like a child rushing into the street to retrieve a ball, indifferent to the oncoming traffic. When you end your call, you see me, waiting. In that fast forward stride of yours, you hurry to me. “You look great. Love your necktie. You have style, kid.” You give me the check inside a crisp beige envelope with your gray logo on the top. I want to show you a sculpture I want sold. Two thousand for you. Little for me.”

In the stockroom, you show me a thin wooden sculpture, a figure of a woman, her thin body bent slightly as if she’s trying to jump. Your long freckled hand gently touches the edge of the sculpture, a wistful expression on your narrow face. “Isn’t it wonderful? It’s called Fear of Success,” you say, reverently. “See how the woman’s body bends forward, as if hurling herself, the lines lyrical yet …” I stand so close to you, I smell the mint on your tongue. I can’t breathe. We stand like this until you switch off the track lights. Quickly, I leave.

1981

“Next year, I’ll take you to Paris,” Bob says, slurring his words. His eyes are bloodshot. We are at the kitchen table. My sixteen-year old daughter is ironing, her blouse stretched along the ironing board. She presses the iron hard on the edge of a sleeve, a puff of steam clouding her too made up beautiful face. I read my client list, highlighting the names I plan on calling. Bob’s business is in trouble and the extra money I’m making helps.

Suddenly, Bob blurts that he read that you left your wife. I don’t turn and face him. I don’t want him to see the relieved expression on my face. When I’m upset or excited I hold my breath and I hold it so long I feel dizzy. Bob pours red wine into a small green glass. His glass. “Be careful,” Bob says after a long silence. “He’s a destroyer.”

Winter comes. I love winter when it’s dark early and the air turns cold. The pandemic is worse than ever. The virus spikes. People don’t wear masks. Trump and Biden debate. Trump is nasty, a monster. The world feels like it’s crashing. I pull the gray cashmere blanket my daughters gave me, around my shoulders. I stare at the black sky. Not a star. Or a moon. Strange with time. Evn though decades have passed, going into my subconscious, going close to you, to us, it has no time. It’s always there to observe. There to see what I had known and had refused to face.

I close my eyes and resume the story.

Since I heard that you and your wife had divorced, I thought of nothing but you. You, only you. No matter who I destroyed, including myself, I wanted you. Don’t you see? I had to have you. You were my fantasy. My Heathcliff. My everything. You represented the art I wanted for myself, the artistic self I hadn’t yet acknowledged. I wanted the passion I felt for you to last forever. I couldn’t live without you.

It’s a stormy winter night. I plan on going to your opening alone. I dress carefully, wearing my Yves St. Laurent tuxedo suit I’d bought years ago in a thrift shop. A tiny lace veil over the side of my waist length hair — -very high heels. Very red lipstick and eyeshadow. My heart is beating and I feel flushed with anticipation. I have always loved the chase.

I watch a lovely long moth with see-through green wings fly around the light in my lamp. Just as he reaches the globe, he drops. He tries again. I open the window in hopes he’ll find his way out. Am I flying to close to the light? What will I do when I get there?

Bob is lying on our bed, a heating pad behind his back, a bowl of popcorn on his lap. “You look nice. You’re going to the opening?” Bob says, looking up.

The television set is on to a Western. He loves Westerns. The Mangold painting hangs above our king-size bed. I hear my daughter on the phone with her boyfriend.

“I want you to leave. Please leave. I’m in love with someone else.” Dark circles are under his tired cornflower blue eyes. His silver hair is thin now. “You’re making a mistake. He’s a great dealer. Brilliant. He’s a destroyer.”

“Please, Bob. We don’t work. I want you to leave.”

I sit in the living room, waiting. Bob carrying a box, stands at the doorway, looking at me. “I’ll come by for my clothes. I’m going to Marin. I made banana bread. Be sure to eat it. You’re too thin. I’ll call you.”

When the door shuts, when I hear his old blue Cadillac with the fins disappear down the street, I hurry outside, to my used old brown Mercedes Bob bought me years ago, and drive to your gallery. I’m a monster. I don’t feel anything but excitement. Nothing, but you. Another broken marriage, broken heart doesn’t matter. At last I’m going to have the life I always dreamed about, wanted, at last I’m going to have true love.

Your gallery is packed. The track lights just so on Julian Schnabel’s massive plate paintings. Your art collector clients, like bouquets, stand in groups, talking about their “museum pieces,” travels to Italy and Germany in search of the “right” art. I sip vodka from an expensive glass. Bartenders mix drinks at a bar. You do everything perfect. Your lighting, your gallery, your art. Your European custom designed tweed hip length jacket is nipped perfectly at the waist and your usual burgundy silk handkerchief is perfectly folded like a flower in your lapel pocket. Even your collectors look perfect — the men wearing leather, like silk, the women wearing Paloma Picasso necklaces and couture. As I stand here, realizing I had destroyed Bob’s life, hurt my daughters again, I watch you easily flit from collector to curator, holding court and I know I love you forever. The track lights flicker. Which means the show is ending. The bartenders are cleaning up and the gallery is almost empty. I pretend that I’m buttoning my cape, until you approach me. “Great show,” I say.

“I love what you’re wearing,” you say, your approving my outfit. “You have style, kid.”

“I left Bob. He moved out.”

Slowly, no surprise on your taut face, you glance at your Rolex watch. “Dinner?”

Am I dreaming? Am I sitting across the table at your favorite Italian restaurant, Little Italy, discussing Schnabel’s monumental paintings. You are looking for gallery spaces in LA, you say excitedly. We eat Zucchini sticks, and share pasta with prawns. We don’t talk about Bob or your divorce. I tell you about my novel, that I’m going to concentrate on finishing the ending. “ I just have to finish it. I have an agent. I want to be a famous author.”

“You will,” you say softly holding kissing the palm of my hand. Your lips are warm. You want to be more than a famous dealer. You want to have homes all over the world, sleep in beauty. We are like two children wanting the same toy.”

After a contemplative pause you say: Tell me about your children.”

I tell you that my oldest daughter is at NYU in film school and that my youngest daughter wants to rescue dogs. “She’s with her Grandparents this weekend.,” I add quickly.

You always wanted children. You sigh, wistfully again. Your first wife was a heroin addict and when she got pregnant you divorced her. “What happened to her?” I ask.

You shrug. “Died somewhere in New York.” You pause. Your second wife lied to you. Said she was pregnant and so you married her. Three weeks after your marriage she said she had a miscarriage. You called her doctor who said it was impossible as she couldn’t have children.” Your mood changes from exuberant conversation to gloom. Rain slams the windows next to us. The restaurant is cozy and warm. “I want a child. It should only happen,” you say.

We flirt. Our hands touch. Our eyes linger. I’m on fire. So are you. I feel it. I’ve felt it for a long time. After espressos, we rush to your car. You push aside the array of art catalogues, airline tickets, and invitations on the front seat, turn on the heat, and the radio. The windshield wipers slide along the windows, sweeping away the rain. The Falling Leaves plays from the radio. Your long freckled hand gently strokes the side of my face.

You say softly “…You make me think of Chanel Number five perfume, white kid gloves, and Valentines. . . you’re gifted, so vulnerable. . . I….

We kiss passionately. I fantasized about this kiss, a kiss so deep it’s in my bones. I don’t want it to stop. You pull away. “If only we had been together. If only you were the mother of my child.”

“An affair with me is a serious thing,” I say.

“I know.” You drive into the rain.

*

Every night I sleep on top of you. When you’re in town, we go to art openings, museum openings, dinner parties at collectors’ swank homes. You are a star. In your velvet custom designed jackets, silk handkerchief dangling from your lapel pocket, you pontificate the glories of minimal art, “less is more,” you emphasize. I sit quietly, wanting you, loving you, craving you. Like a photographer aiming the camera at a chosen object, excluding everything else, in the name of love, I only see you. Want to see you. Please you. Keep you as we are. When I’m with you I hold everything in, if I don’t, I’m afraid you’ll disappear. We’ll disappear.

It’s not all perfect. How can it be? Look what I did to Bob? Look how I live in denial? Sometimes I slip. Sometimes I see you, know you, know the truth. Then there are times nothing could be as perfect — — like two naughty children, indifferent to everyone else in the world, laughing, gossiping, plotting our lives. “We’ll live in Paris,” you say. “I’ll open a gallery there. That’s the place to be,” you say. If I listen to my truths, I know that you always want something else, something more. I know that you worry about your health, your age, are in awe of a famous dealer who is married to a woman forty years his junior, want what others have. Live through your art. Good art. Fine art. Famous art. But then, love overtakes me. A love that all my life I wanted and dreamed about. And you say, “If only we had a child.”

When you read my novel you had tears in your eyes. “It’s perfect. It’s important. It will be a bestseller,” you say. Except when my agent calls and tells me that you called him and asked if he really thinks I have talent, if my novel can be a bestseller? Then I’m angry. Then I face reality that you ‘re in love with the potential that I might be a famous author, but in reality I’m not thin like you like, young, wealthy, but if I have fame and fortune you’ll love me then.

One Sunday afternoon, on our way to the Museum to see a Cezanne exhibit, you suddenly stop your silver Honda in front of a tall Tudor house hanging on the edge of a hill. A for sale sign is on the window. “Isn’t that wonderful? A wonderful house, you repeat, sighing wistfully. “Reminds me of Schnabel’s Paris house. Let’s go look at it.”

I follow you up the long flight of brick steps to the top where this three-story house overlooks gardens and the entire San Francisco Bay. A realtor lets us in and like an excited boy, you rush up the curved Art Deco steps exclaiming the “real brass bannisters, rushing from room to room, gushing over the Art Deco twenty-four high ceilings. I’m trying to keep up, jealous of your new love interest, wondering what happened to Paris?

You are measuring rooms, with your feet, arms out, telling me that the upstairs room is perfect for my writing room — -the girls will have rooms downstairs — — when you say this I assure myself that we will marry here. “I’ll break through the walls — make the middle floor rooms for visiting artists — -curators — -a show place. “A showplace,” you repeat. You buy the house. You sell your Victorian. You do this fast. To do this you sell many of your Brice Marden paintings

You move into my flat. You install phones so you can make your European and New York early morning calls. Your special cereals, hundreds of vitamins, health nutrient drinks, take over my small frig, and the shelves. My daughter does your laundry, irons your handkerchiefs. I take your clothes to the cleaners, fighting with my impulses to tell you that you are selfish, and difficult and I want a commitment. I hear you on the phone saying you are “staying with a woman friend” that you have bought “your dream house.” I confront you, tearfully. I threaten you. We argue. I leave the house and slam the door. You leave the house and slam the door. You return the night after, climb in bed with me and we hold each other all night, not mentioning the terrible things we said to each other.

When the house is finished we’ll move in with the girls, you assure us. You hire architects, contractors. At night, you recline on my bed in your blue Calvin Klein underwear, studying blueprints. You complain that the architect should have “his wrists broken. He’s a moron!” You t throw the blueprints across the room. You throw telephone books. You are completely distracted. Expenses rise. You’re like a tornado that hit my flat. But I’m in love. I dream about marrying you, and having a child with you. I know that we’re going to have this life. “As soon as his house is done,” I tell my daughters.

I don’t use birth control. I’m forty-two. I have nothing to lose, I say.

“If only we were that lucky,” you say wistfully.

Seasons pass. It is Spring. Your house is a mess. We are at a powerful collector’s Russian Hill glass Condo. You’re in awe of his art-filled glass Condo. You talk about your new space in Los Angeles. My heart beats fast. I’m humiliated by the sudden silence, and the sympathetic glances. You say quickly, “I’ll commute. My life is here.”

The next day, you decide that you’re going to demolish and divide your three-story house into two condos. You start the demolition. Bannisters, stained glass windows, half stairways, mix with sawdust, carpenter tools and ladders. It is no longer a house. You are high on the condos now, exclaiming that you’ll make a fortune from the top condo and it will pay for the bottom. Until you choose monogrammed towels and silverware, I believed you. Until then, I trusted you. Until then, I loved you. You want us to each have our own, you explain. You hold me gently. Wipe away my tears. Assure me that you “adore me.”

Every day, little by little, when I’m not at my flat, you remove your clothes, and move them into a room at your half demolished house. You need to be there to oversee every inch, you explain.

*

I’m pregnant. You are in LA looking at Gallery spaces. You are due home tonight. “We decide to meet at Chez Michael’s, our place, at seven. “I love you. I have something to tell you,” I say into the phone. You already hung up. I dress carefully. It is a October rainy night. The kind of rain that turns to hail. I dress in my red silk long sleeve dress, ankle length black cape, bowler hat. When I arrive by taxi at the restaurant, you’re already in the booth seated near the piano, where a pianist plays Cole Porter tunes. The restaurant smells of expensive perfume and waiters glide as if on skates. Bartenders shake ice and make martinis. This is we where we used to go, remember? Almost every night in the same booth, sitting so close we were one? Between kisses, feeding each other?

“Hello,” I say, removing my cape. You have a cold look in your eyes, one I know well, a look I’ve seen when you’re about to tell an artist, no. I slide into the booth, close to you. My hand strokes the back of your hair, where the curls nestle at your neck. I feel enormous love for you. I love you so much. I have never been pregnant by a man I adore.

Before you open the menu, I roll up the sleeve of my silk dress and extend my arm so that you can see the bandage on the inside crook of my arm, where I had my blood test.

“I’m pregnant. Pregnant! We’re going to have a child. I’m going to be the mother of your child.”

You stare straight ahead. “Get an abortion by Friday. I have a Schnabel opening in LA.” I go dark. I go numb. I go into that place I go into when I feel trauma. When I feel pain. A gray place with no air. Only a hole to see out.

Slowly, you tell the waiter you want to order two champagne cocktails. The pianist plays What Is This Thing Called Love? The cocktails come. Red cherries float on the top. I lift my glass and you click your glass on mine. For a second I think you’re celebrating. If you don’t listen to your other voices, to the truth, you’re inside denial. A destroyer, Bob said. He is right. I get up. I take a taxi home

It was near dawn. You didn’t call. I listen to the hail slam the window. My body is detached completely now. I get up, take a carton of eggs from my frig, and put a coat over my nightgown. I drive to your house. I drive fast. I shake from rage.

Bits of dawn light slant the still dark sky. One by one I throw eggs at your house, at your iw windows, until a light goes on and you rush down the stairs. You put your arms around me and lead me into your house. It smells of sawdust, nails. You sleep in the back in a room you had secretly moved into. “Get out of those wet clothes,” you say. You give me a robe and I get under your covers. You hold me tight and we lie awake, wordlessly, not a word, what was there to say? Until dawn turns to daylight, and I drive home.

I have the abortion. I You are in LA. You call from a party, and say , “I’m sorry.”

I never hear from you again.

I have a nervous breakdown. Everything I ever held in, have held in, broke apart. I can’t walk without hanging on to walls. I cry for nothing. I laugh for nothing. Bob takes care of me. Helps me out of this. If you don’t listen to your truths, instincts, do what’s right for you and others, you not only destroy others, but yourself. Denial is a terrible illness. All the time I wanted your artistic self, the art in you. When I had my own, had it all the time. Denial In the name of love I gave up not only myself, hurt my daughters, destroyed Bob, my true love, but I almost destroyed myself. I almost went out of breath.

If you listen to your truths, you will know love.

Only love.

Barbara Rose is an author. Her latest novel Love, Sometimes, 2020, published by Post Hill Press/ Simon & Schuster is available at bookstores and on Amazon and other sites. The audible is just released. Her podcasts and TV appearances sand books are available on www.barbararosebrooker.com

She is at work on a book of short stories.