Robley Wilson

One morning Peter Parker woke to find a young woman in his apartment. He had been up late the night before, pacing in front of his unfinished canvas for the new Fellowship competition, and at first he thought perhaps he was hallucinating. He shut his eyes, put his head back on the pillow, then looked again. There was no doubt of it.

He guessed her to be in her middle twenties, small, with a delicate figure and ankles too slender to support it. Peter would have drawn her as one draws river reeds; he would have had to struggle to duplicate on canvas the lucidness of her skin.

She was--of all things--dusting the furniture. As if she could feel him looking at her, she stopped her work and turned to face him. Her eyes were wide-set and brown; her black hair was cut into the shape of a helmet.

"You certainly are a late sleeper," she said.

Peter sat up in bed, drawing the blanket around his neck. "Who are you?" he said.

"I'm Francesca."

"I mean: What are you doing here?"

"I live here," she said. "My father is the landlord. I live downstairs."

"But I've never seen you before."

She smiled; she had dimples. "You don't go out very often," she said, and went back to her dusting.

Peter believed her. She moved about his rooms with a proprietary manner that might have belonged to a landlord's daughter. He cleared his throat; Francesca again stopped her work.

"Why don't you get up?" she said.

"I can't."

"Don't you wear pajamas?"

"No."

Francesca draped her dustcloth over the arm of a chair. "I might have known," she said.

She left the room. As Peter got out of bed and began putting on his clothes, she stood in the hall with her back toward him, her hands working impatiently at her elbows. He was confused, still foggy from sleep. No other day, so far as he could recall, had begun so curiously.

She called out without turning around: "Are you dressed?"

"No," he said. Hastily, he pulled on his trousers. "Not quite."

"If you wore pajamas you'd never be caught this way. You could step out of bed anytime and be perfectly respectable. "

"I'm usually alone," Peter said. "When I'm alone I'm always respectable." He buckled his belt. "You can come in now."

Francesca came back to her dustcloth.

"That's the trouble, you know." She spoke somewhat breathlessly, as if she were in a race. "You make no allowance for the unexpected, and when the unexpected happens it throws you all out of gear." She finished in a solemn voice: "Do wear pajamas when you sleep."

"I'll think about it," he said.

"I can help you--if you'll let me," Francesca said. "I haven't been back home very long, but I've watched you, and I've observed."

Peter nodded automatically. It was incredible--and flattering--that a pretty stranger should take an interest in him.

"You don't get much work done, you know." She looked uncertainly around the apartment, finally bringing her gaze to bear on a row of empty bottles set on the windowsill. "You drink a good deal, even for a bachelor. Sometimes I see your friends carrying trash down to the alley; there are always bottles."

"That's true," said Peter. "I suppose I do waste time here and there. But I like parties."

"An artist can't afford to let socializing interfere with his work."

Peter imagined he felt a shiver of guilt.

"How about some breakfast?" he said cheerily. He turned on the hot-plate beside his tiny sink. "There's sausage, and a dozen eggs around here somewhere."

"Aren't you going to shave?"

"I'm not going anywhere," he said.

"And aren't you going to brush your teeth?" she said. "And comb your hair? And all the rest of it?"

"I'll get around to it," he said.

"How can you have an orderly and creative mind if you have a slovenly body?"

What is this? Peter thought. He switched off the hot-plate and slouched into the bathroom. Shortly he emerged, glistening and beardless.

"That's better," Francesca said. It was as if she were inspecting him. "We'll make a great artist out of you in no time."

#

After one breakfast with Francesca, Peter realized this was exactly her intention. Her first visit was not her last; every morning from that day onward Francesca came upstairs to his studio and helped him with the details of his life. At first he rebelled. Later he tolerated. Finally he concluded that she was a woman with remarkable insights into the problems of the creative man, and in spite of all the reasonable distrust of women so lately confirmed in him by his married friend George Harmon, he began to find her attentions pleasant.

It was George, a fellow student, who had long since made Peter cherish the virtues of the single life. George was a worthy friend, for he had placed second to Peter in last year's Fellowship competition, and the two of them regularly discussed life and art over coffee in the museum cafeteria.

"Fanny's no help at all," George had said. "She can't comprehend the creative process."

Peter nodded wisely.

"And all she sees in art is a threat to her security. She thinks I should be working--eight-to-five work--instead of loafing around the apartment, dabbing paints on canvas."

"Doesn't she show any interest"

"Sure," George said, "but only in spiteful ways."

Peter didn't understand; it made no sense for anyone to spite art.

"Well, like this," George said. "She'll be ready for bed, and she'll ask me if I'm coming. I tell her No, that I have to get at a picture I'm working on."

"She stays up and bothers you?"

"Oh, no. She goes to bed all right. But I'll sit for an hour or so, looking at the thing. You know--wondering if it's really what I intended to do, trying to decide what else it needs, planning. Maybe planning the next picture, or even the one after that. You know how that is."

Peter knew.

"And then all at once she'll drift out of the bedroom and sit on the far end of the sofa, squinting at me, lighting up a cigarette. She'll keep her eyes on me for a couple of minutes, just long enough to make me wonder what it is I've done wrong, and then she'll say, 'I thought you were going to paint a picture.'" George appealed to his fellow artist with a hopelessness of hands. "As if painting was no different from window-washing, and all you had to do was--get at it."

Peter had commiserated and become properly wary of the women in his life. Clearly, Francesca was exceptional.

One morning she explained to Peter the plight of the artist. "The trouble is that art and life are always in conflict. An artist can't be bothered with the little, everyday matters, so he ignores them for the sake of his real mission. After awhile, the little things are piled up so high around him that they smother him. Then he's beaten." She smiled her dimpled smile at Peter. "That's what I'm trying to do: keep you from being smothered so you'll utilize all your potential."

Another day she gave him her views of art.

"The problem of art is universality," she said. "How many people an artist can reach with one of his paintings. Most artists don't seem to care. They paint for themselves; they put down whatever comes into their heads, and in the end they're the only people who can understand what they're trying to express." Francesca laughed softly. "And a few critics who pretend they know what the artist is saying. All that obscurity really happens because the artist's mind is divided between making a painting and making a living. That's another thing I think I can do: make it possible for you to concentrate on making the painting, and not worry about where the money's going to come from."

Peter was entranced. He knew--from George--how other women dealt with the question of earning a living.

"My God," George had said to Peter, "money's the worst of it. Fanny says if art doesn't put food on the table, then art is worthless. She thinks it's time I did something commercial, quit school, started a family. She's always reminding me how fast the money's running out." George shook his head. "It's like living with a damned banker."

Peter had been angry for George; though he himself was relieved to hold the Fellowship and rather expected to win it again, he knew that no true artist could afford to be distracted by material concerns.

Because she understood such things, Peter gradually allowed Francesca to reshape his working habits. In the mornings, while she cleaned the apartment, and in the afternoons, while she shopped for her father, Peter was to do his painting. Oddly, he found it difficult to keep his mind on his career. While Francesca cleaned he caught himself admiring her as she moved gracefully through his rooms. When she was shopping he thought about her and missed her. In the evening, after she had gone downstairs, he reviewed the items they had talked about during the day. When he slept, he dreamed about her. In a few weeks she had become an indispensable part of his life.

#

One morning, only three days before the close of the annual Fellowship competition, it finally occurred to Peter that his Francesca and George's wife, Fanny, were the same person. He met this discovery with mingled sadness and pride. What was happening seemed obvious to him, though he tried not to be smug. Poor child, he thought; poor, mismatched child. Here was a sensitive woman married to a mediocre artist, unable to find in ordinary George Harmon the spark of inspiration she needed to satisfy her own bright spirit. It was only natural, he told himself, that she should have turned to him. How good, he thought generously, that he was able to help her be reborn, to kill off Fanny and bring Francesca to life.

George would never know; that much Peter decided at once. One did not, after all, walk up to a friend, clap him on the shoulder, and say, "I'm afraid your wife prefers me to you." Nor could one say, "Francesca needs authentic art, and it's plain she can't have it from you." These would have been cruel revelations; Peter regretted thinking them almost as much as he would have regretted speaking them. Yet the facts spoke for themselves. Francesca was all but living with him, and had been for nearly a month. She was dedicated to his work. She had brought an order and a sense of coherence into his life such as he had never dreamed of. She kept up the studio, made his bed, cooked his meals. She had taught him the value of neatness, of a place for everything and everything in its place. She had shown him that his drinking and smoking and idle talk were dissipations which destroyed his drive to create, disrupted his work, and weakened him physically. She had even made clear to him the virtue of wearing pajamas.

In short, Francesca had made it possible for him really to ignore the details and trivialities of living, and to devote all his energies to the cause of Art. As simple as that--or was it? Until now, everything had been innocent; a purely business contract seemed to exist between them, and neither had violated that contract. Peter gradually conceived the notion that this state of affairs might be changed. If he were a better painter than George, might he not be a better lover? Even a better husband? He resolved to find out. While he had little experience of love, he knew enough to be convinced he was in love with George Harmon's wife.

#

This morning, when Francesca came into the apartment, took off her coat, and set about her business with the furniture, Peter said:

"Not today." He touched her hand as he said it, giving to the words and to the pressure of his fingers what he imagined to be a romantic accent.

"You're supposed to be working," she said primly.

"I wanted you to see the painting I'm doing, to give me a little criticism."

She smiled at him, a melting smile that narrowed her green eyes like a kitten's. "I've looked at it," she said. "I thought you'd never ask me."

He led her to the easel by the south window.

"What do you think?" he said. "I haven't finished it yet, but I still have three days before the deadline."

Francesca struck a critical pose, facing the canvas. "What deadline is that?"

"For the Institute Fellowship."

"Oh."

"Do you like it?" It was important to him that she should; it was impossible, considering her interest in him, that she should not. "I call it 'Vision in Stained Glass, Number Three.'"

"Why," she said in a small, perplexed voice, "whatever for?"

"Well, that's what it is, you see. It's a study of a face--a woman's face--seen through a church window, and of how her features are exaggerated and illuminated by a point of view from the other side of different-colored panes of glass." He paused; Francesca turned her absorbed gaze toward him. "It's the third time I've tried this idea," he said.

"That's why it's Number Three," she said. "Aren't you tired of it?"

"It's a challenge," he said lamely.

Francesca nodded. She returned to the painting, swaying before it--like some sort of slender flower, Peter thought--her head tilted first to the left and then to the right. She was beautiful in moments of concentration.

"What's this?" she asked, pointing.

"Where?" Peter moved closer, squinting over her shoulder. Her black hair was exquisite; a suggestion of perfume touched his nostrils. "What?"

"Here," she said. "These squiggly lines; the red ones."

"Lips," he said.

She looked up at him, startled. Her face was unbearably close and her features blurred. It was like seeing Francesca's face through the translucence of actual stained glass. Peter could not assign a color to the glass, but it was a hot color. He tried to speak; the words caught. Mute, he reached out to hold her.

Francesca sidled away from him, shaking her head slowly. "No," she said, studying the vivid canvas, "I can't see it."

Peter stood dumbfounded, his arms awkwardly out from his sides, his pulses thundering. He spoke with some effort.

"It's the distortion," he said.

"But it's not the right kind of distortion."

"It's the impression of a distortion," Peter amended.

"Your impression."

"Of course."

"But can't you see it doesn't have the universality we've been talking about all these weeks?"

Peter sat down on the end of the sofa. "Francesca," he mumbled, pulling together the fragments of his voice and mind, "I love you."

In the prolonged silence that followed, Peter wondered if he had made a mistake, if he had perhaps not allowed her enough time to make a clean break from George. He was only sure that he forgave Francesca for not liking the painting, and that he had to go on talking.

"Francesca," he said in a near-whisper, "if we could marry, you would be the perfect wife for me."

She stared at him. "Are you proposing to me?"

"Yes."

"But I can't marry you."

"Can't?"

She hesitated; she seemed surprisingly nervous. "Peter, you wouldn't understand. You would never understand."

Peter felt desperation in his lungs. He blurted out:

"Look, I know all about it."

"About what?"

"That you're married to George. I know that. I've known it from the very beginning." The lie came glibly. "But you can leave him. You can get a divorce."

"You knew?" Astonishment and horror showed on her face.

"What does it matter? You don't love him; you don't respect him. What you've done for me proves that." Francesca turned away. Peter circled her, almost shouting. "He's not worthy of you. Isn't that why you came to me?"

She was putting on her coat, tying her kerchief around her head. "I have to go," she said grimly.

"Where?"

"Away."

He followed her to the door. "Marry me, Francesca. Marry me and help me to be great."

She stopped.

"I can never see you again," she said.

Upset as he was by the loss of Francesca, Peter was unable to paint for the rest of the day. Nor was be able to work on the next day, or the day after that. The Fellowship deadline came and went, his painting was still not finished. A month later the Institute Fellowship passed into the hands--and household budget--of poor George Harmon.

from Living Alone, published in 1977 by Fiction International; copyright 1977 by Robley Wilson

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