by Nancy Kress
It was not the same painting.
The dragon was there, the cut-glass bottle was there, the diamond circlet was there. Even a girl was there, but not the same girl. The nude in this painting was plump—no, she was fat. Heavy rolls of flesh hung on her belly, buttocks, and thighs, which were much shorter in proportion to her torso than the girl Kenny had painted last night. Her skin was not golden but a pale, anemic pink, as though she never went out into the sun. Under the diamond circlet her hair hung in elaborate frizzes and knobby braids. Even her eyes were different—slightly sunken, with heavy lids and sparse, high brows, odd eyes, and yet strangely familiar . . .
Kenny, perfectly still, looked at the painting for two entire minutes. Then he crossed the room to the plastic shelf where his art books were kept, flipped frantically through one, and then began to leaf carefully at one section. Botticelli, da Vinci, Giorgione, early Titian.
Solid, pale, heavy-lidden woman. Thick of thigh, short of leg, heavy of belly. His painting was not of the same quality—the light was crude and the compositon poor—but it was of the same sort of woman. Botticelli, da Vinci. Giorgione, Titian.
Dazed, Kenny scanned the dates for each painter. They had all worked in the Italian Renaisance, in the same century as Lucrezia Borgia.
He looked again at the girl on the easel. She was smiling an enigmatic, Mona Lisa smile.
The editor of American Male hated the painting. He suggested caustically that Kenny try it at Weight Wacher’s Magazine. Under the sarcasm he sounded incredulous, but not as incredulous as Kenny. Kenny didn’t try to tell him what had happened. He told no one. What had happened? There was no way to even think about it himself, much less explain it to anyone else.
Kenny and Joanne regretted the loss of the money. They had been going to do something frivolous with it, something wonderful but as yet unspecified, undiscussed. Kenny’s next assignment wouldn’t be nearly as lucrative. It was for the science fiction magazine Macromyths, illustrating a story that was a deliberate parody of its pulp days, and the editor wanted a two-color drawing that would recall the artwork from the thirties but be even more improbable. An affectionate body, he said. Kenny liked the idea. He was too young to recall the thirties pulps, but he thought he knew what the editor wanted.
“Did you see the paper yet, Kenny? What happened to the C section?” Joanne said.
A bug-eyed monster, of course. Green. With tentacles.
“Here it is . . . colder tonight. Maybe we should cover the roses?”
And a girl. There would have to be a girl, in a bronze bra. No, make that a platinum bra. With a padlock!
“Joseph Kraft has a good editorial here on the congressional budget. Did you see it? Kenny?”
The BEM would menace the girl. He could hold the key to the padlock, having stolen it from . . .
“Kenny, I thought you were talking. Did you see the Kraft editorial, next to that one on the FBI frame?”
“No, he wants it unframed. Look, we’ll discuss it later, okay, Hon? I want to start this sketch.”
“But Kenny—”
He worked fast. First the monster—lightly, keep it light, a deft parody. He gave it a slight grin. Then the girl. She took longer. Kenny lingered over her, tarrying over each sweet line. She was blond, of course, and young, her hair curved into a thirties pageboy, soft and full. The platinum bra was cut low over full breasts curving into a narrow waist. A filmy blue skirt billowed from the platinum belt and fell in neat folds except where one slim, high-arched foot parted the folds to flee in terror. One hand, raised, failed to cover her full-lipped scream. Her eyes were blue: wide, heavy-lashed, innocent. A feminine morsel, totally helpless! Perfect! He worked on her side of the sketch for most of the afternoon, and then went to play basketball. Under his hand the ball curved sweet and tender.
Joanne had a dinner meeting or something, Kenny couldn’t remember what. He grabbed a brik at an Arab deli, picked up the laundry at the dry cleaners (fair is fair), and bought some strudel. Back at his apartment, he opened his portfolio for another look at the thirties parody, and dropped it on the floor.
Fleeing from his tentacled grinning BEM was Eleanor Roosevelt.
No—it wasn’t her. But the woman in the painting did share two of her characteristics: the long, horsey face and the expression of intelligent determination. She was a plain woman with short brown hair and a stocky body, and she looked squarely from the paper at the thirties world of Depression, dustbowls, and coming war. She wore a blue skirt, cut on the bias from some serviceable material, flat-heeled tie shoes, dark stockings, and a padlocked platinum bra.
Kenny picked the sketch off the floor. His hands trembled. Ripping the paper into tiny shreds and then into even tinier ones, he started to babble. When he stopped, he wanted to piece the thing back together again, to show it—to whom?—but it was too late. Eleanor Roosevelt was too shredded to put back together again.
Later, awake until dawn, he decided it was just as well.
He resolved not to do any more historical pieces. From now on, strictly contemporary or future stories. The editor of Crimecapades wanted an illustration of a prison break. Kenny finished the sketch late at night, tossed in bed for three or four hours, then padded out to the kitchen to peer fearfully at his drawing board. The sketch looked exactly the same as when he had finished it. In the morning it still looked the same. Kenny went back to bed and slept until noon. The craziness, whatever it had been, was over.
He did a color painting of a space capsule. He did a pencil sketch of a hard-boiled detective (1983 style: Frye boots and one earring). He did a smalltown Main Street, ominously deserted under strong sunlight. They all stayed the same as he drew them.
The editor of Journey; a slick, well-thought-of magazine, wanted an illustration for a contemporary ghost story. Kenny read the manuscript, “The Ghosts of the Barbizon,” and liked it. It took place in a women’s hotel in Manhattan. He made some quick sketches, then stretched a canvas and laid down a wash for the painting. Halfway though, Joanne came home from wherever she’d been.
“Hi, I’m home!”
“Hi, Hon.”
“Anyone call?”
“No. Yes. No, I guess not. Only your mother.”
“Kenny, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about. Is this a good time, or should I wait until later?”
“No, no this is fine. Shoot.”
“Kenny—we never talk any more.”
“Sure we do.”
“No. Not really.”
“We’re talking right now.”
“That’s not what I mean. We never . . . share. I don’t mean housework and expenses and that shitwork. You’re—we’re—good on that. Sex, too. But I mean, you don’t ever tell me what’s really going on in your head. Or in your work. We don’t talk.”
Kenny considered what had been going on in his work. Or in his head. But that craziness—that was over. He considered Joanne. It was cold out; her nose was still red, with one wet drop on the end. She looked earnest, with a faint underlay of anger. Kenny couldn’t exactly remember how long they had been married.
“I’m sorry, Hon,” he said. “It’s just that a couple of things haven’t been working too well lately. I’ll try to talk more.”
“But I don’t want you to have to try,” Joanne said. “I mean, I want you to share things with me because you want to, not because you want to please me, Kenny. Kenny?”
“You’re right,” Kenny said. “I’ll try.”
Joanne made a strange noise somewhere between choking and spitting. “Look, if I leave something here, will you read it? It’s right here in this magazine. I’ll leave it folded to the page. Will you read it when you’re done working?”
“Sure, Hon.”
Joanne made the noise again and went to the bedroom to gather up dirty laundry (fair is fair).
Kenny finished laying down the wash and began on the woman in the foreground of the picture. She was the Barbizon’s director; make her
thirty-five. Mature, but youthful. Soft brown hair in tumbled waves. Delicate shoulders under the expensive cherry-red sweater, full breasts. Kenny worked slowly, lovingly. She wore an A-line skirt of grey wool, cinched at the slender waist and flaring out at the curve of hips. Ankles shown off in high heels with delicate ankle straps, ankle bones to match the shoulders. She stood with her back to the building and its strange distortions (this due to the ghosts), so her expression was still unruffled, serene, faintly smiling at whatever she was looking at just off the canvas.
Kenny, just off the canvas, smiled back.
In a few days the painting was done. Kenny finished it at noon and decided to celebrate—he felt that good about it. Who? Carl, of course, his best friend. Carl was free for lunch. Kenny met him at his office on Sixth Avenue and they had an enormous lunch of steaks, good beer, terrific cheesecake. The weather was cold. Kenny decided to walk back to the apartment for the air and the exercise. All the way he hummed, pretending he was singing to the woman in the painting. She laughed and twitched her grey skirt at him. He hummed louder and walked faster, pretending he was not uneasy.
At first, from one glance across the length of the room, he thought that nothing had changed. From across the room the woman on the easel looked the same: cherry-red sweater and grey wool skirt. But then she didn’t. Coming closer, unwinding his muffler in a damp-wool explosion of panic, Kenny saw that she didn’t look the same at all.
Her shoulders were broader, more athletic. The wasp waist had thickened and the hips slimmed, so that her body was more tubular, less curvy. The ankles were thicker, and instead of strappy high heels she wore Docksiders with rubber soles. The whole body looked strong and healthy, alert for action. The woman’s expression was alert as well; she had half turned toward the Barbizon in the background, and Kenny had a clear view of the tiny wrinkles around her clear eyes and the grey streaking her hair.
He took two steps backward, then two more. The last step brought him on top of the folded magazine Joanne had left on the floor, and mechanically he picked it up, never taking his eyes from the easel. He raised the magazine like a club and advanced on the picture. His hand shook and the magazine unfolded a little. Stopping to roll it tighter, he caught sight of the article Joane had marked: MALE-FEMALE COMMUNICATION—JUST WHAT ARE THE BARRIERS? On the opposite page, surrounded by a Della Robbia wreath of running shoes, measuring tape, granola, and bikini underwear, was another article. The illustration was poor, but Kenny slowly unfolded the magazine and began to read:
Is the female body changing? Yes, say two medical researchers at the University of Florida. Statistics kept over a forty-year period indicate that the female form has become straighter and more muscular, with increased inches in the waist and decreased inches in hips and breasts. While some observers claim this is due mainly to the freedom from tight lacing, padding, and girdling that produced yesterday’s exaggerated “feminine” curves, the Florida doctors disagree. Instead, they cite increased exercise, better nutrition, and a different attitude toward their bodies on the part of women themselves.
Looking at each of these factors in turn . . .
“Oh, I meant to tell you how much I like the painting,” Joanne said, coming out of the bathroom. Dressed in her bathrobe, she was drying her hair with a big fluffy towel. “It’s different from your usual style, isn’t it? I really think it’s an improvement. She looks so . . . I don’t know . . . real.”
“Thank you,” Kenny said mechanically. He looked from Joanne to the painting, then back again. Joanne was combing her fingers through her wet hair, pushing it into place. He had never noticed before that it was turning grey.
He could stop drawing. He could see a psychiatrist. He could draw only men, inanimate objects, or landscapes. He could get so drunk that none of it mattered. He could get someone else to verify that what was happening—whatever it was—was in fact happening. Those were the options.
If he stopped drawing, they’d starve. Well, no—not starve; after all, Joanne made more than he did. But things would be tight. As it was, they were too tight to afford a psychiatrist. Painting only men, inanimate objects, and landscapes would cut his income in half. It would also cut out the paintings closest to his heart. Getting drunk sounded tempting, but the problem there was that eventually he would have to get sober again.
He phoned Carl and asked him to come watch him draw. “Watch you draw? You mean, like come see the picture when it’s done and give you my opinion?”
“No. Watch me draw. Really, I need you, Buddy. I’ve got a . . . a block. You know, like writer’s block.”
“How is having me sit there watching going to unblock you?”
“I don’t know. I just feel it will.”
“Well, you creative types are all a little weird. You should see the designer we got now. Okay, when do I come?”
“I’ll call you. Just as soon as I get the right next assignment.”
The right next assignment terrified him with its implications.
It came from Illusions and Interstellars, the most “literary” of the SF magazines. A famous fantasy writer, one of the best, had written a bittersweet tale about two young lovers in a grim and dying post-holocaust world. The story was set two hundred years in the future.
Kenny decided to draw the girl on a beach. He sketched the background: rocks, waves, a stunted post-holocaust tree. Then he called Carl.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to ask Carl over?” Joanne said.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, of course I don’t mind.”
“I thought you liked Carl.”
“I do like Carl. I just wish you’d mentioned it earlier, is all. I thought maybe we could talk.”
“About what?”
“Kenny . . . did you read that article I showed you?” Kenny tried to think what article she meant. All that came to mind was the Della Robia wreath of running shoes.
“You didn’t, did you?” Joanne said. She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Well, all right. It doesn’t matter. But, Kenny, I would like us to just sit and talk. Sometime soon. Okay?”
“Sure, Hon. Whenever you say.”
“No, not whenever—sometime definite. Tomorrow night, okay?”
“That’s the bell, it’s Carl.”
“Kenny . . .”
“Sure, Hon, anytime. But listen, I have to talk something over with Carl now, okay?”
Carl was in a jovial mood. He tried to joke around with Joanne, but for some reason she wouldn’t go along with it and slammed out of the apartment shortly after Carl arrived. Kenny gave Carl a big Scotch-and-water and set down to work.
He drew the girl with careful attention. Nude to mid-hip, breasts high and small—she was young, young—and erect, dainty nipples. The wonderful thing was her hair. A sea wind had caught and blown it wildly; it fanned about her head in tendrils like writhing lengths of heavy silk, between and through which the girl laughed at her unseen lover (Kenny had decided not to draw him). So lovingly did he shade each lock of that glorious hair that it was midnight before he finished. Joanne still had not come home. Carl lay alseep in his chair, five Scotch glasses on the floor beside him. Kenny woke him up.
“Carl. Carl, c’mon now, Buddy, wake up. Wake up, Carl. You have to see my picture.”
“I see it. Ver’ nice.”
“No, listen, look at it. Really look.”
“I look at it.”
“Closely, Carl, closely—no, I mean it. What do you see? Tell me what you see!”
Carl squinted, shook his head, scrutinized the picture. “I see a girl.”
“Describe her.”
Carl opened his mouth, closed it, and then tried a wolf whistle. It came out a belch, on two pitches.
“Good enough,” Kenny said. “Now listen, Carl. You have to take the picture home with you.”
“Home?”
“Yes. Don’t argue—just take it home for me. Here, I’ll get it ready.”
In the morning Kenny shot out of bed. Joanne was gone; she must have left early for the office. If Kenny hurried, he could catch Carl before he left for work. For the whole length of the trip on the uptown subway, Kenny kept his eyes closed, humming wordlessly. The other passengers left a small clear circle all around him.
Carl was bleary but sober. Kenny dragged him by the arm to the plastic-bagged envelope, unwrapped it, and pulled out the cardboard folder.
“Open it, Carl. You open it.”
“You’re acting very weird, Buddy, you know that?”
“Yes. Just open it.”
Carl opened the folder. “Well?”
“Well,” Kenny said slowly.
“Well what?”
“Nothing. Well nothing,” Kenny said. The picture looked the same: nude girl, fantastic hair, somber beach. Exactly the same. Kenny put his head in his hands.
“You want to tell me what this is all about?”
“Yes. I do. Only it’s such a long story. Or no—it’s no story at all. Now.”
“Kenny, you’re not making sense.”
“I know.”
“Look, Buddy, I have to go to work now. Christ, I’m already late. But I’ll come over tonight after dinner and you can tell me what’s on your mind, okay? Is tonight all right? You got anything going?”
“No,” Kenny said. He was still looking at the girl. “Then I’ll see you tonight. Hey, lock the door behind you when you leave, okay?”
Back home, Kenny took a shower. He read the morning newspaper: stock market declines, ELIZABETH TAYLOR TO MARRY, BRUINS EDGE FLYERS 4-3. He vacuumed the living room, made the beds, washed the dishes. Joanne called to suggest dinner out at a Greek restaurant; Kenny said that Carl was coming over to talk about something important. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and then the line went dead. Kenny figured that they had been cut off, but when he tried to call Joanne back, no one picked up the phone at her desk. The phone company must be having problems again.