Monica also: prescribed for herself a swimming regimen, half an hour at the Olcottsville YWCA on alternate days, in the late afternoon or the very early morning; prescribed for herself a reading/research regimen, in connection with the books of classic American literature she was teaching in her advanced English classes—The Scarlet Letter, Walden, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Leaves of Grass, Huckleberry Finn. Of her own accord she initiated a Friday afternoon student reading hour, at which student writers read, with varying degrees of spirit, their own fiction, poetry, and journal notes. It was all very rewarding, very . . . exhausting. But very rewarding.

I can’t talk at the moment, Monica would tell Sheila Trask politely when Sheila telephoned.

Thank you for calling, I’d been wondering how you were, Monica would say carefully—but I can’t talk at the moment, perhaps I can call you back tomorrow. Will you be home?

Out of curiosity, however, sheerly out of curiosity, Monica telephoned Sheila’s gallery in Manhattan—the Laurence James Gallery, Fifty-seventh Street—to inquire about the upcoming Trask show. She had been reading about it, she said, vaguely, wasn’t it scheduled for sometime in February?

No, the receptionist told her: the show was scheduled for late April.

“I thought it was February,” Monica repeated.

It had been February, yes, but now it was rescheduled for April—April 27 was the opening. If Monica would like to leave her name and address, the gallery would be happy to send her an announcement.

Monica asked why the show had been rescheduled and was told, after a moment’s pause, that the artist was out of the country.

“Out of the country! . . . she wouldn’t,” Monica said.

You can’t manipulate me, Monica thought. God damn you.

By accident, a few days later, Monica learned that Sheila Trask had gone to Morocco after all, for one reason or another. Painting?—friends?—vacation?

As Betty Connor chattily explained in the A & P, where she and Monica had met, it wasn’t that unusual for Sheila Trask suddenly to “pick up and go” at a minute’s notice: and usually to somewhere exotic: she and Flaxman both. New Guinea, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa—once to Afghanistan, Betty thought (hadn’t it been written up in the local paper?—Morton Flaxman had come down with hepatitis). During Flaxman’s last years it was generally known that he’d grown rather odd, eccentric, there was invariably an entourage of sorts that accompanied him on his trips, and camped out at Edgemont; “colorful” personalities; artists or would-be artists themselves. So far as Betty knew, however, Sheila Trask had gone off to Morocco by herself, and had told her housekeeper she wouldn’t be back for a very long time—possibly not until the fall.

“The fall!” Monica said softly. “But doesn’t she have a show this spring? . . . in New York?”

“Does she?” Betty Connor said, looking at Monica. “I really wouldn’t know.”