The habits she'd fallen into were hard to break, but as September drifted into a chilly October and she was well into her second week out on the streets, she was finally making some progress. Rough though the finished pieces were, she was happy with the results she was beginning to get. The small six-by-eight panels forced her to ignore inconsequential details and concentrate instead on essentials: the larger shapes of light and dark, the broader color relationships and the overall composition. She was relearning the ability to portray a scene as a whole, rather than rendering its details piecemeal.
The afternoon she met Tommy Flood, she was sitting on her stool, trying to ignore the brisk nip in the wind as she painted the sweeping lines of St. Paul's Cathedral. She'd lucked into a cloudless day and this late in the afternoon, the light was wonderful. Bundled up against the chill, hands warming in fingerless wool gloves, she was so intent on the play of shadow and light on the cathedral's steps that she didn't realize she had company until Tommy spoke.
"Pretty," he said.
Jilly looked up and smiled at the large man who loomed above her. It was hard to place his age, but she thought he might be in his early thirties. He had the slack features of the simpleminded and returned her smile with one of his own, utterly charming and as innocent as a child's. Around his legs pressed an entourage of scruffy, but amazingly well-behaved dogs: an old black lab, one that looked like a cross between a dachshund and a collie, a couple that had a fair amount of German Shepherd in their mix and one that was mostly poodle.
"Thank you," Jilly told him. "It's not done yet."
"My name's Tommy," he said, thrusting out his hand.
He slurred his words a little when he spoke, but not enough so that Jilly had trouble following him. She laid her brush down on top of her palette. Gravely, she shook hands with him and introduced herself.
"Does it have a story?" Tommy asked as Jilly picked up her brush once more.
"What? This painting?"
"No. The box."
Jilly gave him an odd look. "Now how would you know that?" she asked.
"Everything has a story."
3
— So what do the dead dream about?
— I can't speak for others, only myself. Since my death, I've found myself existing in an odd state of mind, one that seems to lie somewhere between sleep and waking. In this place even my dreams don't seem to play fair with my sense of equilibrium. Often I feel that what I dream is real, while a moment such as this— conversing with you— is the dream.
— I think I know exactly what you mean.
— Do you now?
— I have a friend whose dreams are real— they're just real somewhere else.
— I see.
— But you haven't told me yet what it is that you dream about.
— Heaven.
— You mean like angels and the pearly gates and all?
— Hardly. Heaven was the name of the first painting I ever did which seemed to make the leap from mind to canvas without losing anything in the translation.
— So you're an artist.
— I was an artist. That was how I categorized myself, and it was through the terms of my art that I lived my life. In my present existence there appear to be only two classifications of being: the living and the dead. When you must count yourself among the latter, you soon realize that your career options are severely limited. Nonexistent, you might say.
— It sounds horrible.
— You get used to it.
— I'm an artist.
— Are you now? Well, I hope you don't let art consume your life the way I did.
— What do you mean?
— I was so single-minded in my work that the details of my life became a meaningless blur— a sfumato backdrop upon which I painted, but no longer experienced. In the end, when even my art was taken away from me, I had nothing left. I understood all too well how Monet, grieving at the death bed of his beloved wife Camille, could still find himself automatically studying the arrangement of colored gradations that death was imposing upon her lifeless features. Before he ever had the idea of recording the moment in a painting, his reflexes had involved him in memorizing the tonal succession. Blue, yellow, grey.
— Camille on Her Death Bed.
— Exactly. But while Monet went on to redeem himself in Giverny, striking a balance between the demands of his artistic genius and actually experiencing life, I painted myself into oblivion.
4
"Tommy!"
They all looked up at the figure running down the pavement toward them— Jilly, Tommy and five sleepy dogs who were suddenly almost comically alert. The approaching young woman was in her late teens or early twenties, a slim figure not much taller than Jilly with light brown hair flowing out from under an old black fedora. She wore jeans and sneakers and a short quilted jacket with white shirt tails dangling below its hem. Running along beside her was a funny-looking little wirehaired dog.
It wasn't until she got closer that Jilly could see the weariness in her features, the dark circles under her eyes. The woman didn't appear so much exhausted as stretched too tightly, the way Jilly knew she looked the week before she had a show to hang and she was working day and night trying to get the last few pieces done.
"Oh-oh," Tommy said.
"Do you know her?"
Tommy nodded. "She's my sister, Maisie."
There wasn't much family resemblance between them, Jilly thought, but then whoever said everybody in a family had to look the same?
"Where have you been?" Maisie cried as she reached them. "I was so worried."
"Just walking, Maisie. I was just walking."
Maisie sighed. Jilly got the idea that she did that a lot when it came to Tommy.
"He wasn't bothering you, was he?" she asked, turning to Jilly.
"Not at all. He's been very sweet."
"He scares people sometimes— because he's so big and they don't understand that he's not crazy, he's just simple."
"And happy," Tommy put in.
Maisie laughed and gave him a quick hug. "And happy," she agreed.
"Jilly's going to tell me a story," Tommy informed her.
Maisie looked at Jilly, eyebrows lifting.
"It's okay," Jilly said.
Neither Maisie nor Tommy were dressed well— too busy worrying about when they were going to eat and keeping a roof over their heads to worry about buying new clothes as well, she decided. It must be especially tough making do when you had a big brother like that with special needs. The least Jilly thought she could do was entertain Tommy with a story.
"Tommy wanted to know about my pochade box," she said. "I can sit with him over on the steps there if you've got some stuff you want to do."
But Maisie's gaze had gone to the box. "Pochade," she said. "That's French for 'rapid sketch,' isn't it?"
Jilly nodded trying to hide her surprise. Not many of her artist friends had known that— she'd had to provide the definition.
"I read a lot," Maisie explained.
Something clicked in Jilly's mind then, and she realized that she'd heard about Maisie Flood and her extended family of foundlings before.
"You know Angel, don't you?" she asked.
Maisie nodded. "Yeah, she's got me back into school and stuff."
"Welcome to the club," Jilly said. "I'm another one of her successes."
"Really?"
"Though I guess my time goes back further than yours."
"What about the story?" Tommy asked.
"There's two things Tommy loves," Maisie told Jilly. "Pictures and stories. If you can tell a story as well as you paint, you'll have a friend for life."
"Well, I'd probably argue about the criteria involved," Jilly said, "but I love making new friends."
She led the way over to the cathedral's steps, carrying the pochade box as Tommy brought along her stool and the drying box, which held the two paintings she'd done this morning along with a number of unused gessoed panels s
he'd prepared for other paintings. The dogs followed in what seemed like an undulating wave of fur, settling themselves around and upon Tommy, Maisie and the steps as though they were big, floppy beanbag toys instead of real dogs.
"I really don't mind looking after Tommy if you've got some things to do," Jilly said.
Maisie shook her head. "Are you kidding? Where do you think he got his love for stories from?"
"It's not that great a story— doesn't really have much of a beginning or an end. It's just sort of weird."
"You're stalling."
Jilly laughed. "Only partly. Mostly what I'm doing is offering up the apologia beforehand so that you don't ask for your money back when I'm done."
"We don't have any money to give you," Tommy said, looking disappointed, as though he thought that now they weren't going to get the story.
"It's just an expression," Maisie assured him. "Like letting the cat out of the bag— remember?" She turned to Jilly. "Tommy tends to take things pretty literally."
"I'll keep that in mind," Jilly said.
5
— What do you mean by oblivion?
— You have to be remembered. People have to think about you. If they don't, you just disappear. That's what happens to all those people who vanish mysteriously. Not enough people were thinking about them and eventually they faded away. They were simply forgotten, remembered only when they disappeared—BECAUSE they disappeared— and then it was too late, of course. You can't bring back what doesn't exist anymore.
— Too late for those of us left behind, maybe, but you still exist somewhere, or I wouldn't be talking to you, would I?
— Sometimes I can't decide if I am actually dead— or alive, but somehow become invisible. Unheard, unseen, unable to taste or feel...
— I can't see you, but I can hear you.
— Perhaps you are imagining my voice. Perhaps you are dreaming.
— I think I'd know if I was asleep or not. Besides, I never have dreams this interesting.
— I'm happy to realize I can still be amusing.
— I'm sorry. I don't mean to trivialize your situation. Is there anything I can do to help you?
— You could riddle me this: Is it still existence, when one resides in limbo?
6
"Okay," Jilly said. "I guess it started when Geordie got back from his last trip to England. I wasn't expecting him back for another—"
"Who's Geordie?" Tommy wanted to know.
Maisie sighed. "Tommy tends to interrupt," she apologized. "He doesn't mean to be rude."
"That's all right. It's ruder to just expect everybody to know who you're talking about, without stopping to explain. Geordie's a friend of mine," she added, turning to Tommy. "He plays the fiddle and that summer— I guess it was in the mid-seventies— he went on a busking vacation of the British Isles."
"What's—"
"Busking is when you play music on the street and hope people will give you money because they like what they're hearing."
"We've seen people doing that, haven't we, Maisie?"
"We sure have."
"Is Geordie good?" Tommy wanted to know.
"Very good," Jilly assured him. "The next time he's playing somewhere, I'll take you to see him." She caught Maisie shaking her head, and realized why. "It's okay," she said. "I wouldn't make the promise unless I was going to keep it."
"It's just that people mean well..."
"You'll have to trust me on this," Jilly said. Maisie shrugged noncommittally, which was about as much as you could expect, Jilly thought, given how they'd only just met. "Anyway," she went on, "I'm working in my studio one morning and right out of nowhere, Geordie shows up, weeks before I thought I'd be seeing him. Seems he got caught gigging with an Irish band in a London club, except he didn't have a work permit, so he got the boot."
"They made him come back home," Maisie explained to Tommy before he could ask.
"I never got the boot until Maisie found me," Tommy said. "Before that I never had a home."
"I know what you mean," Jilly said. "It's not fun, is it?"
Tommy shook his head. "But we have fun now."
"So did Geordie bring you the box back from England?" Maisie asked.
Jilly nodded. "He got it at something called a car boot sale— it's like a flea market, except it's out in a field somewhere and everybody just sells stuff out of the trunks of their cars"
"Why do they call car trunks 'boots'?" Maisie wondered.
"I don't know. Why do we call chips French fries and crisps 'chips'? Anyway, I thought it was very sweet of him to get it for me. It was pretty grungy, with oil paint caked all over the insides and the tray you use for a palette was broken in two, but I'd never seen anything like it before. If I closed my eyes I could almost picture the turn-of-the-century artist who'd owned it, out somewhere in the English countryside painting en plein— outside, on location as opposed to in the studio. The pochade box is like a little studio, really, only in miniature."
She opened the box as she spoke and showed Tommy how it worked and how everything could be stowed away in it once you were done painting.
"After Geordie left that night, I cleaned it up. Scraped away all the dried paint, glued the palette tray back together again and sanded it down so I could start off fresh with my own palette. It took me most of the day before I had it all fixed up— not quite new, but certainly serviceable. I loaded it up with some tubes of paint, rags and a few old brushes cut down to fit inside, and I was ready to head out myself, just the way I imagined its original owner had. But somehow I never did. I set it upon a windowsill, and except for taking it out into the country a few times, it's been sitting there collecting dust for years. Until I started using it again a couple of weeks ago."
Tommy looked at her expectantly when she fell silent. After a few moments, he couldn't hold it in anymore.
"Is that it? Is that the whole story?"
"Well, no," Jilly said, and then she hesitated again. "It gets a little weird after that."
"We can take weird," Maisie assured her.
The wirehaired terrier sprawled out on her lap looked up at Jilly and yipped as though in agreement. Jilly laughed and roughed the stiff fur on the top of its head.
"After I was done fixing the box up," she said, "I sat with it on my lap in the window seat of my studio. I wasn't thinking of anything, just holding the box and staring out the window, watching the light change in the alley below. I can't see the sunset from there, but that alleyway seems to hold the light long after the sun's actually set. I never get tired of watching it."
"I know places like that," Maisie said. "Doesn't matter if they're in the middle of nowhere and there's trash every-where, they just seem magical."
Jilly nodded. "I'm fascinated by what can't be explained— or at least what can't be explained through the facts most of us have decided are true. So when I had this... visitation, I wasn't scared or anything. Just curious."
"What kind of visitation?"
"I can't really explain it. I was alone, sitting there with the box on my lap, and then there was this ghostly presence in the studio with me, and I ended up having a long conversation with it. I can still remember most of what we talked about, word for word."
7
— I don't know about limbo, but I had a friend once— a dancer. She used to tell her boyfriends that every second step she danced, she danced for them.
— But that would only be half the dance.
— I know. She said you have to keep something for yourself. You can't give everything away.
— I'm not sure I understand how this relates to me.
— You put everything into your paintings. You didn't keep anything for yourself.
— I still don't see the relevance.
— I think you're still doing it, and that's why you're in limbo. You're not painting anymore, but even as a ghost, you're not hanging onto anything for yourself. Maybe if you did, you'd be able to let go and move on.
/>
— I'm not sure I have the courage to move on.
— Unfortunately, I can't help you there.
8
"What happened then?" Maisie asked.
Jilly shrugged. "Nothing, really. We talked a little more and then he was just gone. He never came back— at least not so as I ever noticed. I don't know if he went on, or if he's still stuck in limbo and I just can't hear him anymore."
"Sad," Tommy said.
He looked so glum that Jilly began to regret having said anything about the pochade box having a story. But before she could think of something more cheerful to talk about, Tommy sat up straighter on the steps and suddenly brightened up on his own. He pointed down the pavement to where a vendor had setup a cart selling hot pretzels.
"Oh, look!" he cried.
He gave Maisie a long hopeful look until finally she relented. She carefully counted out the change he'd need, then stowed the remainder back in the pocket of her jacket. Jilly had been about to offer to treat them all, but reconsidered when she realized that it might be taken wrong. Maisie struck her as prideful enough to mistake generosity for charity, and Jilly didn't want to chance losing their new friendship over something like that. She was enjoying their company and wanted to get to know them better. So she sat back and let it play out, waiting there on the steps with Maisie and watching. Tommy run eagerly to the pretzel cart, the dogs scrambling about at his heels.
"Do You think Tommy would like it if I gave him this painting when it's done?" she said.
Maisie shrugged. "It's hard to say. When I said he likes pictures, it's mostly stuff from magazines. He has me cut out the people in the pictures and then he uses them as dolls to make up little stories. He's never had a painting before, so I don't know what he'd do with it."
Jilly decided that she would give Tommy a painting, except it would be one of him and his sister and their dogs. She had a good enough memory that she knew she'd be able to do it back in her studio without their needing to sit for it.
"That was an odd story," Maisie said.
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