She could not account for the impulse. It troubled her, shook her. At the precise instant of Edward’s death, which she had sensed with absolute certainty, her left arm had of its own accord shot out from the shoulder, hand spread wide, and her fingers had snapped closed around the air above her husband’s heart. As if his essence were a hovering mosquito—as if she even believed he had an essence — she had grasped at it, held it in her fist for a long moment. Then she had blinked awake as if from a spell.
The grasp must have been intended to prevent Edward leaving her after 51 years: that was how Georgina understood it in hindsight. But she had spent a lifetime convinced that death was absolute, the end of ends; she simply could not account for such a primitive impulse. “Some remnant of unenlightened consciousness,” she thought, “some ancient fear of finality. An emotional spasm in the presence of death — an aberration.” Georgina straightened her spine and determined to put it out of her mind.
That was before the tingling began in her left palm.
She curtly dismissed that as well, those weeks immediately after Edward’s death. “Nervous strain,” Georgina told herself. After all, she was exhausted much of the time. She was disoriented at repeatedly encountering the resonant emptiness of the spacious Riverside Drive apartment she and Edward had shared since their marriage in 1904, where Edward’s studio had stood mute and purposeless since the cancer diagnosis. There were so many details to look after: laborious meetings with their attorney, with Edward’s agent, requests from the press to field. There was the coordination of the commemoration—“No, it is not a memorial service,” Georgina had corrected the printer; “Edward would reject any possible confusion with the hocus-pocus of a religious service. The title page is to read simply, ‘A Commemoration of the Life of Edward Holz.’”
Georgina had ably managed every aspect of the event in strict accordance with her husband’s wishes, all the while ignoring the mild but persistent tingling in the bowl of her left palm. But when at last the day came to host the rarefied coterie of Edward’s colleagues from the Art Student’s League, select critics and press, gallery owners, and a few of Edward’s highly-promising students, Georgina found the tingling a distraction she could only barely control. Worse, she could not shake the nagging impression that Edward was actually, physically present at her side — her left side. Unsettled to the point of tears—which she had vowed never to shed in public — Georgina found a moment to shut herself into the apartment’s master bath. Running cold water over her hand and wrist, she chastised her image in the mirror as the tingling eased: “Pull yourself together, Georgina. This is psychosomatic, pure and simple. A ridiculous figment of your imagination. Edward is dead, and—” Without warning she sobbed, and her focus snapped to the left. “Why would you linger?” she spat at the air. “You haven’t loved me, darling Edward, not for decades, or if you have you’ve made a great secret of it. Did you imagine I would feel any more heartbreak now than I did when you were alive?” Minutes elapsed as she sat afterwards on the edge of the tub, shaking, stupefied. Only after Hester, the maid, knocked at the door to check on her did she repair her makeup and resume her duties as gracious widow.
As the months passed, the severity of the tingling kept pace with Georgina’s growing conviction that she had been cheated of the sheer relief she had anticipated in her husband’s absence. Their marriage had become a kind of institution years before. Like the Stock Exchange or baseball, it went on because people took for granted that it would. As Edward’s work had flourished in the ‘30’s, as his canvases grew larger, more audacious, more complex; as his paintings sold to an increasingly savvy, well-heeled clientele; as his reputation took on heft and proved durable, so had her importance as his beloved partner lost its vitality. Early on, Georgina had served, predictably, as his muse, sitting naked for him until arousal inevitably won out over line and volume. Those first years they had lived on love and art, migrating between the bedroom and the studio. One afternoon in the connecting hallway, Georgina had stopped short, pointing downward. “Edward, look!” she kidded, laughing a full-throated lover’s laugh. “We’ve worn a groove in the parquet floor!” She had only grown more desirable to him during her brief spell of notoriety, when the “Gina” series was exhibited in the late ‘20’s. But time, and custom, and a series of miscarriages, and other women, and hard words and slammed doors wore a groove of their own, and after the war Georgina’s role had more or less officially devolved into figurehead, executive secretary, and now, executrix.
She began to appear a bit haggard. Concerned, their attorney suggested that she get out of New York for a while, book passage to Europe. “I look terrible, I know,” she had replied, “and I’ll admit I’ve felt better. I can be candid with you—with Edward gone I had expected to feel, well, lighter. Unconfined. So many years living on the margins of his life. And yet that bond between us hasn’t loosened. It’s as if—” Tempting as it was to confide in this old family friend, Georgina stopped herself. “Oh, never mind, I’m being ridiculous. And please don’t worry, I’ve seen Weisfeld, and a specialist he recommended had me in to Lenox Hill for some tests.” A shrug. “Nothing.” Georgina stroked her left palm absently, gazing across an imaginary Atlantic Ocean. “No, I can’t even conceive of getting on a ship. So much effort.” She made a show of rallying. “Maybe instead I’ll insinuate myself into Aunt Holz’s guest house out in Mattituck for the summer. Impose on Diane and Rich—oh—oh!” Georgina stiffened in her chair, grasping her left arm above the elbow. “The tingle,” she explained, “it just blossoms into a–well, a vibration, sometimes, out of nowhere. I’m sorry — it’s just so silly — no, I’m perfectly alright. I think a cab back uptown is a fine idea.”
After that episode, Georgina let it be known that she was “taking a little time off from the world.” No to Mattituck, no to the Queen Mary, no even to New York. Of course everyone understood; Gina’s had so little time to really mourn, poor thing. Cloistered in the apartment, she tasked Hester with answering the phone, ordering the groceries, bringing up the mail. Georgina slept when she felt like it and stared across the Hudson at the garishly-lit silhouette of Palisades Amusement Park when she didn’t. She indulged in bestsellers — From Here to Eternity and Marjorie Morningstar and lots of Daphne du Maurier. Channel 9’s three-showings-daily Million Dollar Movie supplied all the Hollywood she could ask for, rekindling her youthful screen romance with the young James Cagney. Only one concession was made to what Georgina now derided as her “Tingle Spells:” the door to Edward’s studio remained closed at all times. Weeks passed, and her customary level-headedness returned; well-being very gradually began to seep under her skin like a soothing topical ointment. At last she felt light. The tingling all but disappeared, the incidences brief and more intermittent. As a test one bright morning, she removed her wedding rings. Examining her bare left hand for any sign of incipient treason, Georgina did her best Cagney: “That’s more like it, see? Now lay off the funny stuff, you dirty rat.”
Then August arrived, their anniversary month, raising within her a palpable ache for all that had been best about Edward-and-Georgina, Georgina-and-Edward. “Inevitable,” she admitted, giving in for once to a good cry, “but at least rational, for God’s sake. Stick with the novels and the reruns, my girl, and wipe your eyes. September will be here before you know it. You’ll be ready to get on with things.”
She had Hester pick her up a copy of My Cousin Rachel, a perfect dog days distraction. The better part of a Saturday evening had passed in reading when Georgina came to the end of a passage and realized she was terribly hungry. On a whim, she ordered up Chinese food. When the first Chinese restaurants had opened on upper Broadway, Georgina and Edward had come to crave their wonton soup, egg rolls and chow mein, often devouring the food in bed right out of the waxed paper cartons. It had been ages since she had last had it. When her order arrived, she flopped on the sofa and spread the feast before her on the coffee table, prepared to read her way through the late meal.
The apartment was quiet in the way that summer nights can be in New York, when those with the wherewithal vacate Manhattan for summer homes and summer vacations. Skipping past the soup — ”just a bit too warm for wontons” — Georgina made her way slowly through an egg roll, postponing the pleasure of tucking into the shrimp lo mein that filled the still, humid air above the coffee table with its complex aroma. She forced herself to finish a long paragraph; then at last she uncoupled the interlocking flaps of the stiff white container and dug in.
The tingling returned with her very first mouthful.
“Edward?” It was out of her mouth before thought could form. She felt, as she had that day at the commemoration, that her husband was anything but incorporeal, that Edward’s body was right there on the sofa at her side. But now the sensation was even stronger and carried with it a pull of longing. For a brief while, she forced herself to look straight ahead as she struggled against it—it must be the humidity, the memories stirred by the food, some side-effect of too much du Maurier. But the tingle was there, undeniable, more intense than in the past and, strangely, more pleasurable. She turned to her left.
“Edward, you are here, aren’t you? I’m not imagining it?” The tingle became a warm, deep vibration Georgina could hear as well as feel, traveling up into her forearm. “But we were always so sure there was nothing after — how can — why are you here?” The vibration quickened as if in answer. Georgina sat transfixed, capitulating further with each passing second to its power, as if it had simply been a matter of time before she would. The explanation for all that had been inexplicable since his death came to her unbidden: Edward had been grasping for her just as she grasped for him the day he died — the Edward who loved her fervently. “You’ve come back — no, wait, I see now, finally. You never left, did you?”
The vibration crept steadily upward towards Georgina’s shoulder. Her heart beat now rapidly as the wings of a small bird, yet she was enveloped in the same calm euphoria she had known in her young husband’s arms long ago. Then once again, her left arm shot out from the shoulder, her hand spread wide this time to enclose Edward’s in her own. She rose and hurried towards the studio, stopping first in the hallway. “Edward, look!” She laughed, a full-throated lover’s laugh. “We’ve worn a groove in the parquet floor!” she kidded. Then Georgina turned the knob of the door to the studio and entered. The vibration sent its warm waves up into her neck now, and she felt her heart might fly out of her body, breathless as she was. “You must paint, Edward! Look, the light is miraculous!” Dropping her dressing gown to the floor, Georgina lay down on the daybed, delighting in her nakedness. She laughed again as the vibration suffused her torso. “Paint, Edward, before this glorious light slips away. Paint!” Savoring the familiar perfume of oils and solvents and cotton canvas, Georgina inhaled deeply. As her lungs filled, the vibration peaked, wrapping her heart in its tender grasp and spilling out the perfect love pooled within its chambers.
Hester found Georgina in the morning, posed just as she appeared in the last of the “Gina” paintings. She gently covered Georgina’s body with the old velvet blanket Edward had so often napped beneath there in the studio. As she left the room to go to the bedroom telephone, Hester was surprised to find her footing sink just a fraction into a shallow groove in the parquet floor, which she had never before noticed.
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 2, 2017.