Life needs change.

CONSPIRACY THEORY #20050111

Just within is a telephone awkwardly situated, as is so often the case in French institutions, it’s both squeezed into a narrow corridor and in full public view. I want to call Ken, but i don’t want to call attention to myself. God forbid the clerks should think I can’t do research without calling my husband.

            I call. And there he is, the warm but slightly distant hello, the midwesterner’s greeting my Detroit campanion gives to the world. He asks, “What’s happening?”

            What’s happening? How can I tell him that one minute I’m looking at the baptismal record, and the next I wish I were in a nice warm bed far away? That I’m standing at the telephone, and I know I look like a professional woman, but I’m not, I’ve become a shadow of myself, the ghost of Eunice. Someone’s after me, like the witchy woman in my palazzo dream. It’s Trudy. She’s come up out of nowhere to warn me that if I stay longer, it’s all over. That I’d better leave now, better go to sleep, drop out of sight, get lost. She always does this to me. She waits for a moment when my guard is down, and she slips in.

            I can’t tell Ken this; he won’t get it; he’s too sensible.

            “Nothing much. How about you?”

            Still, I want him to tell me to come home, let it go, like my father used to when, in the middle of the night and unable to study anymore, I’d wake him up. He’d get up, soothe me and say, “Forget about it, maydelah, you’re too tired now, don’t worry, you’ll take the test another time.” But not Ken, he’ll tell me I’ve found something, that I should keep at it. Go to the church, see what’s there. Thanks a lot, Kenny. You can sit in your studio daydreaming for hours, but I can’t come home and hide? Can’t you understand that finding Victorine’s baptismal certificate is practically finding nothing? It brings no legacy, it discloses no new names or addresses. I wanted to find the simply facts of her life. Is that too much to ask? Patrick said it would be here, so where the hell is it? I know I’m being impatient. I know it’s only a few weeks since I’ve been looking for her. But if feels like forever.

            “Bye darling. See you later.”

Eunice Lipton, Alias Olympia: A Woman’s Search for Manet’s Notorious Model & Her Own Desire, 63-4.

posted by: conspiracytheorist at 04:02 | link | comments (1) |

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