As to the paintings themselves—Monica saw them so often, so obsessively, even, it appeared, in her sleep, she no longer “saw” them at all. There was a distinct internal logic to the series which one began to feel but it would have been impossible for Monica to talk of it. To murmur that the canvases were beautiful—powerful—compelling—lyric—or “lyrically violent” (as the young man from the Laurence James Gallery said)—seemed quite beside the point. All that was significant about them was interior, secret, indefinable; they possessed their own integrity; they were. Monica began to understand her friend’s almost fanatical interest in technique since “idea” could only be embodied by way of technique; Sheila detested the very notion of a conceptualist art—words were an admission of failure. So, in the studio, hour upon hour passed in absolute silence. It was a place where language did not determine action. It was a place, Monica sometimes thought, prior to language. To enter it—to dare to enter it—was to surrender the power of words, and to submit to another sort of power altogether.

The paintings were succeeding, however. They were beautiful in their own oblique intransigent way. Of that Monica felt morally certain.

“Yes, fine, but the thing is,” the young blond man said, lighting up another of his cigarettes, and fixing Monica with a look—intimate, slightly reproachful—she didn’t at all like, “—will she get them out of here on time? They’re finished now but of course you can’t tell her that—you dare not tell the woman anything. Frankly, Monica, this is the worst I’ve seen Sheila in ages. We’d all been led to believe, you know, from talking with you on the phone, that you had things in control—I mean, my dear, a little more in control.”

12

Monica was beginning to get sick, Monica felt at times a veering light-headed sensation as of unreality . . . not that the world about her (walls, ceilings, floors, windows, students’ attentive faces) was unreal but that she herself, passing uncertainly through it, was unreal.

She had missed a few classes this spring. Nothing extraordinary—just a few classes.

She was forced to miss (“unavoidably”) one or another meeting—a general faculty meeting, an English Department curriculum meeting—since she was needed elsewhere. Of course she made her excuses; she was careful to make her excuses; and to be sincerely sorry, sorry.