Robert Lowell flanking a pale, straw-hatted Ida, taken by Elizabeth Hardwick on Mount Desert Island in August 1968, two days after the
New York Post
printed the iconic shot of Ida in a Chanel suit with matching spectator pumps and alligator bag outside La Côte Basque with Babe Paley and Truman Capote (“Whose Hair Higher?” the caption queried). Invitations to twelve state dinners at the White House, from the Johnson to Obama administrations. A royalty statement for
Aria di Giudecca
(7,238 copies sold in the first six months of 2000).
And there was this, from 1964:
Dear Mr. Wainwright:
I want to thank you for sending Ida Perkins’s new book,
The Face-lift Wars,
which I have been nibbling at with great fascination since its arrival. Miss Perkins is that unlikely miracle, a Real Thing. Gertrude Stein, who as you know encouraged Ida when she was still a girl, would have been gratified to see how she has panned out.
With appreciation,
Alice Toklas
* * *
That night Paul had troubled dreams, of Ida and Sterling and A.O. and Gertrude Stein and Mao and Gloria Steinem (and Jasper, too) caught in bizarre conflicting situations, battles, triangles, thrashing sex, and misery—and him on the sidelines, not knowing how to enter in, to engage or calm them. He woke headachy and exhausted, and spent another rainy day in the barn finishing up his transcription, which that day seemed boring and pointless. He was sick of them all, and most of all sick of himself and his voyeuristic need to live through them. Luckily, it would soon be time to pack up and head back to the city.
First, though, Homer was coming for a visit. He’d called to announce that he and Iphigene were driving up to Hiram’s Corners to check in on Paul—“consorting with the enemy,” he’d put it good-humoredly enough, though he’d been disparaging about Outerbridge when Paul had admitted he was working with Sterling on the notebooks. Maybe Homer was curious about how his old competitor lived; his own country place was a turn-of-the-century Tyrolean chalet in Westchester originally built by his great-uncle that now, unfortunately, backed onto the Saw Mill River Parkway. Or maybe it was simple boredom that sent him out of the house. In any case, Paul decided to invite Sterling and Bree to lunch at the Cow Cottage on the Sterns’ visitingday. He fixed a shrimp salad, iced tea, and icebox cookies, and waited for the fireworks.
It had gone well, much to his relief. Sterling presented Homer with a rare copy of a Hiram’s Corners Chapbook of Elspeth Adams’s
First Poems,
and Homer had been visibly touched. They’d all chatted cordially about the weather, their children, and various authors, steering clear, for the most part, of the ones they’d “shared” (i.e., fought over) and moving on to the general decline of the business and the perfidy of agents—subjects the two old lions were in utter agreement about. And then, after a couple of hours of making nice, Homer and Iphigene had been on their way. Ida had gone unmentioned, needless to say—after all, there were other ladies at the table—but in Paul’s mind, and who knows, perhaps in the other men’s, too, she had been vividly present.
He’d imagined her suddenly appearing: lunch on Olympus,
le déjeuner sur l’herbe,
all of them immortally young, feasting nude on nectar and ambrosia. Instead, it had been a congenial little meal, a moment of truce between aged warriors—with nothing to arouse their old rivalry.
“He’s mellowed,” Homer said about Sterling when Paul was back at work—which was precisely what Sterling had told Paul down at the dock that afternoon. The good feeling lasted a few weeks, and then they were back to whatthey enjoyed most: doing each other down to Paul. He was caught in the middle, as usual. Yet he felt abler now to move back and forth between his heroes. He’d been with both of them at the same time and place and no one had even raised his voice.
VII
Sunny Days
New York Post
printed the iconic shot of Ida in a Chanel suit with matching spectator pumps and alligator bag outside La Côte Basque with Babe Paley and Truman Capote (“Whose Hair Higher?” the caption queried). Invitations to twelve state dinners at the White House, from the Johnson to Obama administrations. A royalty statement for
Aria di Giudecca
(7,238 copies sold in the first six months of 2000).
And there was this, from 1964:
Dear Mr. Wainwright:
I want to thank you for sending Ida Perkins’s new book,
The Face-lift Wars,
which I have been nibbling at with great fascination since its arrival. Miss Perkins is that unlikely miracle, a Real Thing. Gertrude Stein, who as you know encouraged Ida when she was still a girl, would have been gratified to see how she has panned out.
With appreciation,
Alice Toklas
* * *
That night Paul had troubled dreams, of Ida and Sterling and A.O. and Gertrude Stein and Mao and Gloria Steinem (and Jasper, too) caught in bizarre conflicting situations, battles, triangles, thrashing sex, and misery—and him on the sidelines, not knowing how to enter in, to engage or calm them. He woke headachy and exhausted, and spent another rainy day in the barn finishing up his transcription, which that day seemed boring and pointless. He was sick of them all, and most of all sick of himself and his voyeuristic need to live through them. Luckily, it would soon be time to pack up and head back to the city.
First, though, Homer was coming for a visit. He’d called to announce that he and Iphigene were driving up to Hiram’s Corners to check in on Paul—“consorting with the enemy,” he’d put it good-humoredly enough, though he’d been disparaging about Outerbridge when Paul had admitted he was working with Sterling on the notebooks. Maybe Homer was curious about how his old competitor lived; his own country place was a turn-of-the-century Tyrolean chalet in Westchester originally built by his great-uncle that now, unfortunately, backed onto the Saw Mill River Parkway. Or maybe it was simple boredom that sent him out of the house. In any case, Paul decided to invite Sterling and Bree to lunch at the Cow Cottage on the Sterns’ visitingday. He fixed a shrimp salad, iced tea, and icebox cookies, and waited for the fireworks.
It had gone well, much to his relief. Sterling presented Homer with a rare copy of a Hiram’s Corners Chapbook of Elspeth Adams’s
First Poems,
and Homer had been visibly touched. They’d all chatted cordially about the weather, their children, and various authors, steering clear, for the most part, of the ones they’d “shared” (i.e., fought over) and moving on to the general decline of the business and the perfidy of agents—subjects the two old lions were in utter agreement about. And then, after a couple of hours of making nice, Homer and Iphigene had been on their way. Ida had gone unmentioned, needless to say—after all, there were other ladies at the table—but in Paul’s mind, and who knows, perhaps in the other men’s, too, she had been vividly present.
He’d imagined her suddenly appearing: lunch on Olympus,
le déjeuner sur l’herbe,
all of them immortally young, feasting nude on nectar and ambrosia. Instead, it had been a congenial little meal, a moment of truce between aged warriors—with nothing to arouse their old rivalry.
“He’s mellowed,” Homer said about Sterling when Paul was back at work—which was precisely what Sterling had told Paul down at the dock that afternoon. The good feeling lasted a few weeks, and then they were back to whatthey enjoyed most: doing each other down to Paul. He was caught in the middle, as usual. Yet he felt abler now to move back and forth between his heroes. He’d been with both of them at the same time and place and no one had even raised his voice.
VII
Sunny Days
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