by Carole Maso
“I’m lost,” he said. He was hot and tired. “I can’t remember what convention I’m supposed to be at.”
“Doesn’t it say on your tag?”
He looked down. “No.”
“My suggestion is to get on an E train and ride it somewhere and then ride it back again. It’s cool in there and it will come to you—where it was you meant to go.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“An E or an F train.”
The E finally arrived and he stepped into the swimming-pool coolness of the train and waved.
“What a sad story. A conventioneer with no convention,” Max says.
He wasn’t waving at me.
“Ah, it gets sadder.”
He was waving at someone else, his wife perhaps, in a straw hat, too, and a convention tag. Or maybe he was waving to his friends, somewhere in this city right now, the other tile or air conditioner salesmen, or whatever. He’s waving, Max. He’s lost.
Max shrugs his shoulders. “You’ve always got another one of these stories, Caroline—every day.”
“Please help me.”
“I am recently widowed.”
“I have no food.”
“My dog needs an eye operation.”
“I am a Vietnam vet.”
“I am the Emperor Caesar.”
“I am unemployed.”
“Hello, the man before you is stone deaf,” says the tape slung around the man’s shoulder. “He is legally blind. Won’t you help him?”
“Dove Bars,” the sweet call of the season. “Roses, roses,” this summer’s call. Sirens.
“Is that a seeing-eye dog or is that a real dog? Because we don’t let real dogs in here,” the store owner says. “It’s a seeing-eye dog,” the man responds.
I pass the mailboxes in the foyer. Whittiker, Davis, Pelligrino. I have never met Whittiker, Davis, or Pelligrino, I am quite sure. The place does not seem that familiar. The names don’t ring a bell.
Categorizing helps.
Things that are new:
Whittiker, Davis, Pelligrino
The Milk Bar
The Banana Republic
Hallo Berlin
Things that have multiplied:
Patisserie Lanciani
Vinyl Mania
Elephant and Castle
The Magic Carpet
Things that have moved:
The Pink Teacup
Three Lives Bookstore
Formerly Joe’s
One of the candlestick makers
Reminiscence
Categorizing helps. Especially when thinking of things that are gone.
Things that are gone:
The Unicorn Store
Feu-Follet
The Middle of Silence Gallery
The wing of St. Vincent’s where my mother died
The entire Antonocci family
You
Jesus and the Star
“Look at this painting he’s done of me. It’s fascinating, don’t you think?” Jesus says. “Look at that strange star. I do seem to remember an amazing light shone on my infant face.”
“It looks like the comet,” Alison says. “My mother and I are hoping to see it this year.”
He runs his hand across the Arena Chapel wall. “Here I am just after I was born. Do you think I really looked like that?”
“Isn’t she beautiful?” he says, gazing off.
“Why is she so sad?”
“I will die in an oven in Auschwitz. I will be humiliated and killed in Soweto. I will suffer with a young woman who swallows pill after pill, seeing no way out.”
What are you talking about? Alison thinks.
“I will die a horrendous death over and over and over again in a plague in the late twentieth Century.”
“It’s unbearable to think,” Alison says.
“Such a strange star breaking over my head.”
He runs his hand over the chapel wall. “Look at my mother in a mantle of blue. And Joseph—”
“Whatever happened to him?”
Jesus shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “He just left. I miss him.”
He presses his face next to the face of Joseph that Giotto has painted. “He was very kind,” Jesus says. “He taught me how to build a house for the birds.”
“That’s nice,” Alison says.
“Such a strange star this is, breaking over my head.”
More Green, Less Blue
I pass by the mailboxes quickly: Whittiker, Davis, Pelligrino, and enter the coolness of the house. I put on the “Transcendental Etudes” and close the shutters, shutting out the fire-eaters, the dancing bears, the tattooed ladies—the street festivals on every corner.
I go into your library where it is dark and quiet.
I understand a little. How hard it was to leave these books, their beautiful bindings, their cool, soothing appraisals of painting, sculpture, architecture.
It was a way to love too. It was the way, I see now, you loved us, a bit removed—but it was love nonetheless.
Where did your days of painting go? The days when all you wanted to do was paint her? Before our births? Your palette of bright colors, she sitting, standing, lying for hours. Oh yes, there was something dangerous here too, you detected it instantly, but you were young and she with her almond-shaped eyes, her chestnut hair, was happy to do the thing she did best: to be still and allow you into her life in one of the few ways still possible.
She called you an artist and she loved the idea of living with an artist, though you were no artist, you told her, merely a dreaming student. She loved being a bohemian in the Village with you. “She would dance, Caroline, with dangling earrings sometimes. She could be red and yellow and green some days. She was capable of that for a few hours before she fell away again, back into gray. She was a painting by Matisse, a painting, or one of those achingly beautiful line drawings. After a while I could not see her any other way. Lying on the striped divan. Her pantaloons. Her breasts. But I didn’t have the ability to approximate her beauty—the talent, I believe we call it.”
Was it really that, Max, or was it too frightening to go to the place she was, where, as you know, sooner or later the artist must go?
“I wanted so badly to get her right. To get at the truth of her, the place where likeness turns into intimate recognition. But she was out of my league.’’
Or did you want to turn her into paint and canvas? Put her out there where she was manageable?
“I did my best, Caroline.”
I don’t doubt that, Max, that you loved her, that you did what you could.
She was a painting by Matisse, but she took sleeping pills.
“She was way out of my league, Caroline.”
I put on the “Five Sarcasms” by Prokofiev. I go into the kitchen, open the cabinets, eye all the gourmet foods. There are green peppercorns, pink peppercorns, star anise, Greek oregano, herbes de Provence, Spanish saffron. There are four kinds of mustard, plum chutney, tomato chutney, champagne vinegar, balsamic vinegar, tarragon vinegar. Rice wine, sesame oil, walnut oil. Little bags of morels, chanterelles, Trompettes de la Mort. Pignolis, hazelnuts, currants, dried apricots. Irish oatmeal, couscous, blue corn meal, biscotti di vino, olivada, pizzocheri, toasted seaweed sheets, sea salt, a tiny tin of Russian Beluga. What I realize is that I knew him. I am finding no secrets. Nothing I don’t already know. Nothing shocks here. I knew him and I loved him for what he was. Little nests of pasta everywhere.
Actually, there are a few surprises. For instance, he always hated to eat Mexican food out in New York and yet here in the apartment are two books of matches from Carramba! (Exclamation point theirs.) Did he take his last lover to Carramba!?—the one I see on the street a lot, walking her dog, each time she sees me, bursting, yes, bursting into tears. I don’t want him dead either. He probably didn’t even love you. Then again, did he take you to Carramba!? Maybe he loved you. No.
This one who keeps crying, Max. I have t
rouble keeping up with her. One day she has sort of reddish hair, then another day it’s brownish and poufy, then the next day honey blonde with a permanent. Did she want that blonde, wide-eyed, ringletted, innocent look, even at thirty, that phoney-baloney, burrito eater, margarita drinker?
A woman at thirty is allowed to act like a child if she can find someone twice her age. But thirty is grown, or as grown as we ever get.
Max, I never knew you to eat Mexican food out.
Forgive this anger coming out of nowhere—in a book of matches, in a change of hair. The day I got here, there was a glass bowl on the floor in the kitchen. The only thing I can think is her dog must have been thirsty.
“Poor thing’s parched, is it?” you must have said in your sarcastic way, shaking your head and looking for some old bowl. When I came in that day, there it was on the kitchen floor, a small glass bowl, half filled with water. It was only then that I finally cried.
I never said I wasn’t angry.
I’m not really sure why I’m staying here, where you are everywhere. I could stay at the Vermeer Hotel or the Rembrandt, be moved by Van Gogh Movers. I could stay at the Hotel Chelsea, or how about the Algonquin? Do I really want to dig up your life like a dog at a bone? Found: more paints, and still more canvases in a third closet. Found: a childhood Bible of my mother’s inscribed “This Bible belongs to Veronica Le Bourveau, given to her by her parents on the occasion of her confirmation.”
Written in French.
Who told her not to move?
Found: lots of mail of mine you never forwarded, tossed on the bottom shelf of your night table.
From the liquor cabinet, I take out my port. You told me you put down a case of port for each of us at our births, to be drunk after our twenty-first birthdays. “We had no money. I mean really no money, me disinherited for trying to paint, your mother with nothing really. But we made it a point about the port. We both agreed, they shall not live unlovely lives. There is so much that is crass, brutish, ugly. We shall show them what pleasure is. What beauty is. One does not need endless amounts of money for such things. This is a good life. This has been a good life, despite everything.”
Why all these conversations going on in my head now, Max? What is the point of all this?
“Are you complaining?”
Yes. No.
This port is delicious, Max. Thank you for thinking of the three of us. A letter from David reports on his restoration work on The Last Supper, he and his Italian wife standing up there all day on a scaffold. Grey’s in Greece on a dig. I’m not sure how he’s doing. David hasn’t heard from him lately either.
“Keep track of him, Caroline.”
I’ll try.
What the red magazine with the dying Rock Hudson on the cover says that I’ve been putting off reading since I got in the house is that he had something called acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV), human T-cell lymphotropic virus-III (HTLV-III). It seems the virus specifically attacks the T-4 lymphocytes, a subgroup of white blood cells. Origins: Unknown. The Green Monkey of Africa? Maybe. Prognosis: Grave. Up through July 1985, some 12,067 cases recorded in the United States. Six thousand already dead. No one has ever been known to recover.
Rock Hudson went to France to receive HPA-23. I’ve had no TV for a year. Hardly any newspapers. This is ridiculous. I’m going to call the TV rental place. Why didn’t you ever write to me about this, Max? The whole neighborhood dying. Didn’t you notice?
“Yes, but why didn’t you ever open a paper, my cherub, or turn on the radio?”
Night descends. I put on Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. I open the shutters slightly. The light looks like the long thin bones of my neighbors, falling across the street.
I open the closet door again. The drawings are lovely, Max. The arm of the woman raised, then the arm down, no hat, then a fringed hat, a man in the background, then the man forward holding the woman’s hand. The man alone. The woman erased. Where did she go? The woman back with a new face, serene, lying on a striped divan. Then the woman with two faces. Then everything darker. Then everything obliterated. Then here, July 9th, you begin again: The woman, her arm raised, her arm down. The woman smiling.
How pretty she is there on the window seat. In a light blue dress with a tie. Dark, dark hair waving to her shoulders. Not unhappy, not so remote. Max, did you try to paint her into a life?
Another painting. In this one her half-motion is stopped. Her figure has turned sculptural, gained weightiness, become immovable. Her face grays, the expression slackens. What to do? What to do? “More red!” I imagine you cried, looking at her. “More green, less blue.”
What the Light Looked Like
There were many things I wanted to tell you. Nothing pressing, but still things I wanted you to know. There are lots of Cummington stories—how I got up at dawn to stalk elusive birds, worked in the garden, learned the names of all the flowers and trees. Yes, this is your same high-heeled daughter talking, the one afraid of spiders, the same one who long ago took a walk in a field of buttercups (this is your story, Max) and said they looked like a thousand tiny taxicabs. Oh my God, you said. What have I done? This was one of our big stories, the ones every family has, one of those stories that stick.
It was on that same day too that I remember hearing for the first time of “What the light looked like.” It came from your love of seeing, your love of simile and metaphor. Your love of me, too, I’d like to think. It was just the two of us then, the boys already up the Hudson at boarding school. Mom gone, just you and me, delirious with grief.
“Let’s play a game,” you said as we drove home one Sunday from the boys’ school. “Look over there. What do you think the light looks like?” I shrugged. “To me,” you said, “the light looks like twin elephants. See,” you pointed, “there are their trunks, their bodies, their tails. Foreheads together.” “But, Daddy,” I think I said, “that’s what the highway looks like.” “No,” you said, “it’s the light falling on the highway that makes it look that way. On another day in a different light you would see no elephants.” I thought I understood. You were always my best teacher, Max. It was a way to try to learn to see.
We played what the light looked like for many years. We played it for the rest of your life. It kept us near when we were far apart, kept us looking. We decided to keep notebooks of what the light looked like on certain dates and in certain places. It was a lovely notion, Max—that sometime in the future on a particular date and time and place, if the conditions were right, I could look out and just perhaps see something of what you saw.
The Robe of Christ
I realize, Max, that one must imagine the robe of Christ in order to touch it.
“Why would you want to touch it?”
A woman who suffered from a plague thought if she could but touch his garments she would be made whole.
“I see.”
It’s purple. It’s velvet. It’s got ermine on the collar.
“Ermine, really?”
Well, what do you think?
“I hope it’s a hospital-green bathrobe. And that his crown is a sort of shower cap. What the surgeons wear.”
Don’t be funny, Max. There are roses—don’t you see them?—blood red arranged around his head.
Jesus begins to shake his head. “No. Don’t be absurd. There are no roses around my head,” he says. “Make the roses disappear. See better.”
Your robe is made of linen. It’s off-white, there’s a rope for a belt—No, the robe is brown and woven. It’s a sort of caftan—there’s a hood, protection, I hope, from the sun, from foul weather. It feels like burlap. Does it scratch? When he moves it makes a sound. It sounds like peaceful sleep, mysterious and even. It’s got a lot of folds in it. It must be dark in there. It’s filled with pockets. It smells a little like sheep.
I put my hand out to touch its border. It’s softer than I thought. It feels a little like felt. Sheep could sleep there. It’s got a sweet s
mell. The hem just brushes the ground.
Jesus smiles. “Your faith has made you whole.”
A Shepherd Drawing Sheep
Another story from back then. It was right after Mother died. You sat down on the edge of my bed.
“A long time ago, a shepherd boy was sitting in a field with his sheep,” you said. “It was such a lovely day and the sheep were so beautiful that he decided to draw them. But he didn’t have a pencil and paper, so he drew them on a boulder with a stone.”
“Is it because he loved his sheep?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“And so that he could keep them? So they would not go away?”
“Yes, my cherub.”
And you said, Max, that into the field where the young boy was drawing walked a man, a painter named Cimabue, who saw that the boy was drawing sheep like angels and he took the boy and he taught him all that he knew. That boy drawing sheep in the field was Giotto. He would become one of the greatest painters ever to live.
Candace Goes to New York
“I loved him more than the rest of you did,” she said, sobbing now. And for whatever reason, whether because the words sounded so absurd or because no one felt like arguing, or simply because they were the truth, no one said anything at the bus Station, not Maggie, not Alison. They didn’t try to talk her out of leaving. They watched their lilac dancer, their lover of life, their passion flower, pass unexpectedly on that warm morning from adolescent to adult, right before their eyes.
She was full-grown in an instant. They saw a carefree, a reckless life even, suddenly directed by rage.
“How thoughtful of him to wait for you to go on sabbatical,” she sputtered, looking at her mother. “How convenient.”
“He’s ruined our lives only if you allow him,” Maggie whispered.
“I won’t make it easy for him. I suppose he’s expecting it to be easy. Well, he’s in for a real surprise. And if you think I’m going to NYU now, where he’ll be, you’re crazy!”
Still they said nothing. They just let her rant, her sentences interrupted by cries.