The Great Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

biographer. Henry has a rival, unbeknownst to him, I’m sure.”
    “
Another
biographer called you?” Lila asked, instantly jealous in spite of herself. She reached into her fruit-salad bowl and pulverized half a cherry with her molars.
    “He’s coming over for lunch today. Why would two people want to write a biography of Oscar?”
    “I can imagine that a lot of people might!” said Lila.
    Lila had been flabbergasted and hurt that Teddy hadn’t seemed even remotely put out when she’d had to drop out of college. Instead, she’d seemed galvanized, even excited, by her sudden reversal of fortune. Lila had had to admit to herself that being a secretary had agreed with Teddy in a way student life hadn’t; she had drifted through her three semesters at Vassar without much ambition, but over the years, then the decades, she’d stayed at the same law firm, working for a succession of lawyers she bossed around and whose schedules, kids’ birthdays, file contents, and correspondence intricacies she knew better than they did. They trusted her completely to run their lives. When one retired, the lawyer who got her next felt honored with a great treasure. She had retired at sixty-five, to much fanfare; she’d become a legend at the firm, a force to reckon with. “You’ll have to get past Mrs. St. Cloud,” people said when they wanted a favor from her boss (that Mrs. was nothing but camouflage, an honorarium of sorts, of course). Or, if they were in with Teddy, they showed off their right to call her by her nickname. After work, she went home on the subway to her Calyer Street house, where she was likewise ruler of the roost. She cooked excellent meals and was generous and loving in her way, but she raised her girls firmly and without sentiment, and whenever Oscar came around, she sent them off to bed so she could take care of the insatiable, all-consuming needs of the great artist with undivided, clear-eyed attention. She argued with him, laughed at him. She lit fires and made midnight suppers and entertained him with stories about the lawyers she worked for, one of whom represented him, and their clients, some of whom were his fellow artists, many of whom were famous. He ate and laughed and drank and smoked and opined and argued and listened; then he took Teddy off to bed and left before the girls awoke.
    Whenever, during the sixties and seventies, Lila had managed to sneak away from husband and children and have an evening or afternoon to herself, it was Teddy’s house she went to, Teddy’s life they talked about—Oscar, his tantrums, his other women, the hilarious poetic notes he left on his pillow for Teddy in the mornings. Lila always felt both revitalized and soothed after a visit to the Calyer Street house, with its crazy old icebox and funky furniture, Oscar’s sketches pinned up haphazardly over the fireplace, filled year-round with the ashes left over from their firelit dinners. She breathed easier there, spoke more loudly, smoked cigarettes and took a snort or two of whiskey, listened to whatever records Oscar had brought over—Miles, Mingus, Monk, Sun Ra, Coltrane, Louis Prima, Harry Partch—as she ate the food Teddy cooked and put in her two cents if Oscar was around and there was an argument afoot. At the parties they gave, Teddy competed with Oscar for the limelight, teased him in front of people, disagreed openly with his pronouncements about his rival painters. Oscar seemed to get a huge kick out of Teddy’s jabs and jousts and never seemed to notice that Lila drank in everything he said and yearned to lick him all over like a big lollipop. If he ever looked Lila’s way at all, he treated her like a lesser adjunct of Teddy, like Teddy’s dimmer domesticated sister.
    While Teddy, without having graduated from college, lived out Lila’s youthful dream of hobnobbing with artists and living an unconventional life, Lila had capitulated to her own tame destiny, which even her Vassar degree hadn’t