Free A Complicated Marriage by Janice Van Horne Page B

beyond white.
    Then, once more, as if on cue, another salesman appeared—probably a relative of the vacuum guy—and sold us a rug off his truck for the bedroom. Puce, which effectively transformed grim to grimmer. The rug shed and smelled iffy, but we hadn’t expected too much for $15. I took on the entry into the kitchen, stacking and restacking Clem’s paintings that were stored there, hoping each time to further compress them. I needed the space because I wanted to put away Clem’s paints, card table, and easel. I wanted a living room.
    Clem turned a disinterested eye on all these “improvements.” Except for the rug. Being a barefoot guy, he relished its softness and in later years became addicted to wall-to-wall carpeting. While relieved that he didn’t criticize my efforts, I was disappointed that as much as I puttered and pasted, no one really cared but me. That was on gloomy days. Most days I suspected Clem got a kick out of it all. And I knew he loved the eggs and bacon.
    On rare occasions, we would invite four people for dinner, that was my limit. I would set up our two card tables and, to disguise their different heights, cover them with the damask tablecloth my mother had given me. I would serve my only dish, beef Stroganoff and mashed potatoes from the Good Housekeeping cookbook, a present from my college friend Nancy Spraker. One night, right before Esther and Adolph (Gottlieb) and Ileana and Leo (Castelli) arrived, Clem made some remark about the potatoes and I threw them at him. He laughed, I cried. Though I was secretly thrilled by my audacity.
    Any criticism was agony, but with cooking I was most vulnerable. I had never learned how. Helping in the kitchen as a child had meant mashing an orange pellet of food coloring into a pound of lard to make “butter” during the war rationing years. My mother was a hamburger, hot dogs, Jell-O, and open-a-can kind of cook. Best times were when we would go across the Boston Post Road from our apartment house to the diner. A real diner, silver on the outside, with porthole windows grimy with steam and torn-up red booths. Turkey with soggy dressing and bright yellow
gravy and soft rolls topped off with gelatinous cherry pie. Heaven. Our hair would frizz from the steam. And my mother wasn’t tight-lipped and cranky from having to do something she loathed.
    Unfortunately, I followed my mother’s ways and ever after felt alienated in the kitchen. When I cooked for people, it was not with love but with trepidation. Coupled with that, my taste for food remained that of a child, a diner child. Before college I had never tasted anything as exotic as lasagna or pizza. An analyst would tell me one day that food hadn’t been “validated” for me—my first encounter with psychobabble—which I found marvelously funny. It was also true.
    About once a month, Clem and I would give a party. Unlike our drop-in gatherings, these were the real thing, where we actually called and invited people. “Spit backs,” Clem would call them. Cheese, chopped liver, and some nuts would suffice. And no A and B list; uptown, downtown, and sideways, we invited everyone who had recently invited us, plus close friends and anyone who happened to be passing through. In fact, parties were often prompted by out-of-towners, usually young artists who Clem thought should meet as many locals as he could round up. He believed strongly that artists should get to know each other, talk about art, see what was going on in New York up close and personal.
    One such evening was a particularly large party for Pierre Soulages, in from Paris. There was the usual throng of Bennington girls and art types, among them Lee and Jackson. By now, I had gotten to know them a bit. We had been out to their place in Springs for a few weekends. Uncomfortable times, for me. Things were easier in New York when they would sometimes come by on Jackson’s weekly trip