* * *
—
On his way to meet me at the café, Bill had noticed that trash had accumulated in the gallery courtyard, presumably because the janitors who usually picked it up were part of the strike. He’d started talking to a security guard and asked the man if he’d let us into the museum if we cleaned up beforehand. The guard was a black man who looked to be sixty or so, whose hand Bill shook warmly. Extending an arm toward me, Bill said, “And this is Hillary, the girl I’m hoping to impress.”
The guard’s name was Gerard; he and I also shook hands. The next thing I knew, Bill and I were striding around the courtyard picking up discarded soda cans, cigarette stubs, and bits of paper, and throwing them away. We were calling to each other as we passed in front of and behind an oversized bronze sculpture of a reclining human figure, and it was some of the strangest fun I’d ever had. Was I enjoying myself because it was a cool but sunny spring day and I was outside and moving around? Because everything about this afternoon was surprising? Because Bill was tall and silly and handsome and flirtatious?
It was ten to four when Gerard let us in a side door, into the cavernous and shadowy museum proper; the lights were not on. We wandered past an ancient Greek vase and a ceiling tile from Syria and a bust of the Roman emperor Commodus. We paused at a nineteenth-century American oil painting of pink jungle orchids, and Bill pointed at one of the leaves and said, “Look at that level of detail.”
I pointed, saying, “I like the hummingbird.”
Bill’s index finger fleetingly brushed against mine as he said, “There are two hummingbirds.”
I hesitated—it was plausible he was a person who did such things without deciding to, but I wasn’t—then I fleetingly brushed my finger against his. “They look like they’re telling secrets.”
He laughed. “How do you know they’re not debating important jungle policy?”
He turned from the painting then, and I turned, too, and he set his hand on my back just below my left shoulder. Inside me, there was a ripple, a kind of swooning. He wanted to be on a date with me? I was the person he wanted to be alone with? Being courted, being found “really attractive” by a man like Bill was not a type of good fortune I’d expected or even actively wanted; to want it would have seemed ridiculous and indulgent and possibly greedy. I’d had crushes, of course. In fact, I’d had many crushes. But I tended to feel excitement for the other person in inverse proportion to his excitement for me. And I didn’t even aspire to men like Bill, to anyone magnetic or exceptional—I pinned my hopes on guys who were smart but ordinary, and still it worked only when they were the ones who liked me first.
In front of an Edward Hopper painting of a woman in a hotel room, Bill said, “This is my favorite piece in the museum. Sometimes I stop by just to check up on her.”
The woman wore a sleeveless red dress with a low-cut neckline and high-heeled brown shoes and sat on the edge of a made bed, some kind of dunes or mountains in the picture window behind her, beneath a blue sky. The painting wasn’t overtly sexual, but it wasn’t entirely unsexual, either.
“Why do you like it?” I asked.
“The intensity of her expression—what’s she thinking? Is she heartbroken? Is she angry? Is someone else in the room with her?”
Now that he mentioned it, it did seem another presence, perhaps that of the painter, was implied.
“How do you have time to come here?” I asked. “Between working on Senate campaigns and procrastinating?”
He grinned. “Coming here is procrastinating.” He pointed at sunlight against the wall in the painting and said, “Aren’t the shadows and light remarkable?”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that you were such an art aficionado.”
“You mean because I’m from Arkansas?”
“Because you’re so busy.” Sheepishly, I added, “And maybe partly because you’re from Arkansas, although I promise I’m not an East Coast snob. I grew up outside Chicago, so I can’t be.”
Bill appeared enthused rather than offended as he said, “I have a hard time getting people to believe this, but Hot Springs is incredibly sophisticated. The sulfur springs have always attracted people from all over the country and, really, the world—everyone from Hernando de Soto to Al Capone to Teddy Roosevelt. De Soto literally thought he’d found the fountain of youth. Now there’s different religions, there’s beautiful houses and hotels, there’s arts and culture, and it’s even where a lot of baseball teams come for spring training. Admittedly, there are seedy parts, and some avid fans of the seediness include people near and dear to me, but I think it’s a mix of activity that makes life interesting. Don’t you?”
There really was something ridiculously endearing about the man beside me. “Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“And there’s an alligator farm and an ostrich farm. Oh, and a zoo with a mermaid skeleton.”
I smiled. “Did anyone ever mention that to Darwin?”
“You do realize,” he said, and he was smiling, too, “that it’s entirely possible to be from Chicago and still be an East Coast snob?”
* * *
—
In the spring of seventh grade, I ran for student council president, as did four other rising eighth graders. When the list of candidates was posted on the bulletin board outside the principal’s office, it didn’t surprise me that all my opponents were boys, and if anything, it pleased me: I immediately understood the advantages conferred if students voted along gender lines.
On a warm May afternoon, following lunch in the cafeteria, the four boys and I gave our speeches to the entire junior high. We’d been told by Mr. Heape, the student council adviser, to speak for a maximum of five minutes.
My father, who was sarcastic, exacting, and often mean, helped with my speech. Starting in grade school, I’d write papers in their entirety then give them to him, and he’d mark them up with a ballpoint pen: crossing out entire paragraphs, flagging repetition or soft arguments, writing puerile or vacuous in the margins. I’d make changes based on his suggestions but not show him second drafts. There was a joke my father told about a piano tuner whose surname was Opporknockety, which allowed for the punchline “Opporknockety tunes but once,” and early on, when I’d asked him to read a revision, he’d replied, “Hugh Rodham tunes but once.” By profession a supplier of drapery fabric and window shades, my father was also a Republican, a political junkie who disdained most politicians, a cheapskate, and a man not only easily bored but disinclined to conceal his boredom. It was he who provided me with the introduction to my student council campaign speech.