With Monica so often at Edgemont Sheila was spared the necessity of talking on the telephone, an ordeal she dreaded. More and more, lately, since returning from North Africa, she was developing an aversion to the telephone; an almost pathological hatred of it. “I’m so grateful to you, Monica,” she said; and Monica said impatiently, “I’m not doing these things for you, actually, I’m doing them for the sake of your paintings, and because I can’t bear the thought of so many people taking advantage of you. I want them to know,” she said, “there’s someone here who is in charge.”

7

Sheila had good days in her studio but they were balanced—in her private cosmology they were necessarily balanced—by bad days. Heights were followed by depths; exhilaration by depression. Yet she wasn’t, she insisted, clinically ill: “I’ve been through all that before,” she said mysteriously.

It was Monica’s task, Monica’s privilege, to help Sheila maintain an emotional equilibrium: an activity that took a great deal of her time but was in itself exhilarating. Walking a tightrope, high above the ground. Eyes fixed resolutely ahead, arms outspread for balance. The trick being not to look down; not ever to look down.

Monica had dropped her study-discussion group that met on Thursday evenings; she made her excuses—vague, sincerely apologetic, guilty—to Keith; of course she had no time for swimming in Olcottsville; she had systematically pared back her life to teaching, and those academic meetings from which she could not reasonably absent herself, and her involvement with Sheila Trask. It was of paramount importance that the paintings be finished, the show properly hung. And the arrangements, the numerous arrangements, yet to be made . . . !

Because Sheila would far rather paint than eat, on her good days, Monica had to keep a close watch on her. She kept herself going for hours—eight, ten, twelve—on black coffee and amphetamines; she explained impatiently that she hadn’t time for sitting down to eat and she hadn’t any appetite in any case unless—unless Monica kept her company, Monica prepared the food, there was something special about the food Monica prepared. (And it was true, Monica had a flair for preparing unusual concoctions with the blender, experimenting, as she said, improvising, with exotic soups that never failed to intrigue Sheila: yogurt with shrimp and dill; puréed apple with curry; mulligatawny; cauliflower with onion and carrot, thyme, fresh-ground black pepper, in a strong chicken broth. She had to eat anyway, Monica told herself, she would have to prepare dinner at home, so why not in Sheila’s handsome kitchen at Edgemont?—amidst the copper utensils, the blue and white ceramic tile, the broad windows overlooking a splendid sweep of land.)