Anything but Still Lives: The Worlds of Edward Hopper

by Anne Gambling

the future, perhaps, or would it leave her listing in the backwash of the past? If only. If only she knew. If only she knew for sure.

  They had sat beside the radio only a few nights before and listened to the broadcast. England and France declaring war on Germany. What could she do? What could she do but cry.

  ‘You seem to weep a fair bit these days, Jennifer,’ Harvey had said.

  But what could she tell and where would she start when everything brought her to tears? Everything and nothing – a war half a world away on top of everything going on right here inside. Stifled, unable to breathe, a damned pressure cooker in her head, a lifetime of baggage snapping at her heels.

  She stayed on the beach, watched a storm roll by, its blue-black thunderheads tugged south by the wind. Just passing by. Just letting her know. I’m watching, it said. I’ll see what you decide.

  There and then, with the storm as her witness, she decided to pray – for herself, for the world. These tears seemed worth it.

  She walked back through the beach grasses, up and over the wind-smoothed dunes, past the marsh into the meadow. Conor was sitting on the stoop throwing a ball to Joe.

  ‘Joe,’ he whistled. ‘Joe!’ But Joe was doing what he loved best. Nosing around in the grass, sniffing out those rabbit holes.

  ‘Seen the storm?’

  He cocked his head over toward the far paddock. ‘Mmm, it’s heading south.’

  She followed his gaze into a golden field of sunflowers. How did she miss noticing them before? ‘When did they go in?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just this season.’

  She screwed up her eyes, better to see them. ‘When will you pull them up? Isn’t it getting a bit late?’

  He looked over to where the evening sun torched their faces. ‘No. I’ll just let them die back and self-seed a couple of seasons. See what happens.’

  She smiled. ‘Remember how you sent a book by Thornton Burgess for the children? Old Mother West Wind? They always called it Uncle Conor’s book.’ She kicked her foot in the dust. ‘It always made me homesick for Redwing.’

  That was the thing about reminiscing. It was like telling no one in particular that the baggage was being revisited, but you were revisiting it all the same.

  ‘Each time the wind would blow, it’d be: Here comes old Mother West Wind, down from the purple hills,’ she continued. ‘That’d be how I’d start. And the kids would answer: With her bag of Merry Little Breezes.’

  Tears pricked afresh, her sigh was audible. And they’d spin around in the green meadow till it was time to go. She looked over at his suntanned profile. I’m spinning, she thought, but please don’t tell me it’s time to go. Not yet. Please, not yet.

  ‘Never read it,’ he said, chewing thoughtfully on the plug baccie. ‘Just posted it off. Pictures looked fine enough though.’

  She was shifting, slow-rolling across the sky like those thunderheads.

  Well? they asked. What are you going to do now, Jennifer Jane?

  I’m frightened Aunt Em. I’m frightened. Her thoughts skittered about the meadow with the breeze. Would that troubles could melt like lemon drops. Would that you clouds were far behind me. Would.

  She stood stock still, looked past him. Past him and the dog to the sunflowers.

  ‘Oh my,’ she pointed, ‘a rainbow.’

  And yes indeed. There it was. The evening sun shafting through mist-filled air of a storm never arrived to create this wide prism, this full spectrum of colour. Slap bang in the middle of this season’s sunflowers.

  ‘Now that be a mighty pretty sight,’ he declared. It was and all. Inky clouds the canvas for this rainbow’s simple note of joy, an archway leading on, beyond those big bursting sunflower heads, that in turn sang their delight at a last chance to glow.

  The sun eclipsed purple hills, taking Mother West Wind with it.

  ‘I want this,’ Jennifer wept. ‘I want this every day.’ She wrung her hands, couldn’t speak any more. It was too much. It was all too much to put into words, a spectrum of wants in her head, their colours beautiful, yet blinding. What to do. Oh, what to do.

  Shifting the wad in his jaw, Conor quoted Wallace Stevens: The exceeding brightness of this early sun makes me conceive how dark I have become.

  ‘Wrong season, wrong time of day,’ she sniffed.

  ‘You get my meaning,’ he said quietly, and held out a hand to her tightly-crossed arms. ‘It’ll pass. Just go with it. Like the seasons. Shift as they shift. It’s all part of life. Each day brings another sunrise, each eve another sunset.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, opening the door, heading inside. But stopped on the threshold, her hand still on the knob. Thought: Just around the corner, there’s a rainbow in the sky. Yes, Irving. Thought: Birds fly over the rainbow, why then, oh why can’t I? Yes, Judy. Thought: Shift as the seasons shift. Yes, Conor.

  Yes, Jennifer. Time to face-off that baggage, leave it behind in a season long past. She crossed the threshold, shut the door firmly behind her. Strongly. Loudly. Closing off all possible exits to her task.

  Joe yanked his head up out of a rabbit hole at the noise. But it was only for an instant. It didn’t distract him long.

  Rosie the Riveter

  (inspired by Hopper’s Summertime, 1943, in the collection of the Delaware Art Museum)

  Happy day, hot day, soon-to-knock-off day. Angie Johnson put down her welding gun, took off a thick leather glove and raised her goggles to wipe away the sweat seeping into her eyes. She slowed her breathing from its concentrated whoosh this protracted work always gave her, its slight mix of panic and adrenalin a potent precursor to straight seams and smoothed-out slag, and looked around.

  It was getting toward four in the afternoon and all the girls knew it. After the big success two weeks back, when Rose Hickey made national headlines for driving a record number of rivets into the wing of a Grumman ‘Avenger’ Bomber right here at the factory, management had decided to give everyone this 4th of July weekend off. All the girls were excited by the recognition Rosie’s record had given them. But a whole weekend off? What a reward!

  Angie smiled over at her partner, Bella, and tried to wiggle her toes inside these new steel-capped boots. They still felt strange. Only a few days back they had been issued with the safety shoes. Previously there’d been none in women’s sizes and they’d just had to make do and be extra careful on the assembly lines in sneakers.

  ‘Trying to wiggle your toes again?’ Bella giggled. ‘I’m doing it every few minutes too – feels kinda crazy-strange, huh.’

  Angie pulled her goggles and gloves back on and settled into this last seam of the shift. Everything was mighty strange if you stopped to think about it. This time last year she’d been in college and the war had seemed so far away. But then Pa was recruited to air force staff at Bolling, and soon after big brother Jim had enlisted too. Pilot training done and dusted, he was stationed out at Pearl Harbour, just itching for an assignment against the Japs.

  That had made up Angie’s mind – she’d help build those planes for Jim and his mates to fly, cut down those slant-eyes before they ended up hurting any more innocent Americans. She’d taken the New York Central Railroad up to Tarrytown, Westchester County, all the way along the picturesque east shore of the Hudson, walked in the door of the Eastern Aircraft Factory and been assigned to welding.

  ‘Do you know how to crochet?’ one of the trainers had asked.

  ‘Um, no, but I can sew a neat stitch.’

  ‘You’ll be fine then, sister,’ and after six weeks of classes, she was out with the rest of the girls on the line – welding rod in one hand, fire in the other, rod on the seam, keeping it as straight and neat as she could, before wiping away the remnant beaded slag with a little steel brush. And with every seam she thought: This’ll keep you safe up in the air, Jimmy. This’ll bring our boys back home.

  They were long days. Shifts 6am till 4pm, seven days a week. She and Bella came up from Manhattan every day by train while local g
irls did the graveyard shift because there was no barracks accommodation nearby. The mood was always good, and having Bella to ride up and back with made the trip seem shorter than its 45 minutes from Grand Central Station. Bella lived in Little Italy, she in East Village near Greenwich, so they could walk together a few blocks too. In summer it didn’t matter so much, the days were long, bright and warm. But winter …

  Her mother was always on at her to be careful. There may be a war on, but this is still New York City, she’d say. Especially when you read stories in the Times like the one the other day about an old man being mugged by two sailors on the subway. What were they thinking? It just didn’t seem right.

  It was a neat apartment she and her mother kept. Ground floor in a three-storey brownstone walk-up. Seemed a bit big now with the menfolk gone, but it was home. The double hung front windows in the parlour looked out onto a quiet street where children played baseball till late in the evenings, and neighbours were permanent and friendly. She’d gone to school just down the street and round the corner at Lower Eastern. She’d walked the dog to the park on Tompkins Square. Yep. Some things had to be stable in a war. Home and Mama were her rocks.

  Friday 4pm. She punched the clock and moved out through the big wide factory doors into the light and heat stretching out toward a summer’s weekend. Some girls were already swinging down toward the train station, arm-in-arm singing the latest hit song on the