The Art Lover

by Carole Maso

  I walk up the slippery hill to Frazier, the walk I do in my sleep. I love this house. The faded wallpaper. The wicker chair. The windows protected by plastic, the land fading before me, everything moving to gray. Outside only Olive Thayer negotiating her way to the mailbox through the snow.

  There are only four artists here now and two of us I hate. What makes me stay? I watch the panes turn from gray to white to ice blue to cobalt to sapphire to black. Only a young Chinese man playing Bach on a cello accompanies me. It’s winter and I am alone.

  I imagine my husband and our two sons are out in the fir forest cutting down a Christmas tree. Mother, left alone in the house, bathing. I can see them in the rising steam—their red flannel, their high boots, their rosy cheeks.

  “How about that one?” my sweet husband says with glee and the boys walk around it. “No, it’s got to be bigger,” they scream and run to another, a giant, “like this.” The littler one, still unaccustomed to being away from me, huddles next to his father, closes his eyes for a second and stretches out his arms and whispers, “You know how Mom likes a big tree.” His arms can barely make the width of me, the size still of his whole world. They circle each tree in the forest before choosing. Their dream of perfection is a small one and will remain so. They ask so little from the world. They are so easily satisfied. They are so involved and so happy in their Christmas tasks.

  I am thirty this year. These December nights, alone in the house, are so long. My husband and two sons are out Christmas shopping. The older one glides his hand over an antique lacquered box. The younger one picks up a rag doll with no face. He pulls at his father’s sweater to question this.

  My husband points to a case of rings, and a woman takes one out for him. He runs his finger along the ring’s intricate setting. He looks into the center of the stone. Like outside, it is slate blue and white.

  I step from the bath. My husband and children are huddled downstairs now in the library, whispering about the gifts, next to a fire.

  I take out the L. L. Bean catalog. For my husband, a Penobscot Parka (p. 15) or a Pendleton robe and slippers (p. 36).

  And for my sons, Bean’s Child’s Pull Sleds. They are sturdy, the catalog says, well made.

  I drift into sleep. I dream of a large sleigh, a chestnut horse galloping through snow. Clearly it is a vision from the past, but I miss it as keenly as if it were my own childhood.

  A woman, a mother in velvet. A muff in her lap. A mustached man in a top hat and bright scarf. Children. Carols. Sleigh bells.

  What artist has given me this scene? What painter or poet? Who has made me nostalgic for a past I cannot have ever known?

  A racing sleigh moving through the snow toward loved ones on a winter night. One drip. Two drips. A cry in the night. “Mommy.”

  I dream of the one yet to be born. The one still curled in my womb. The one who will open like a star. I will kiss the stars she has on her hands instead of knuckles. I will make her new potatoes, baby vegetables, potage St.-Germain, oeufs à la neige.

  I wear red woolen tights, flannel dresses, clogs sometimes. There are always children around my hips. The kitchen is always warm.

  I dream my son hands me a rag doll with no face. “Thou shall not make graven images.”

  The length of the winter takes its toll. The snow on top of snow on top of snow. How cold it is. How lonely. How long each night.

  But then it is light. Suddenly there is the shock of morning. I run to the window. Is that a cardinal in the snow? No, just the tip of Leon Thayer’s elbow in his foul-weather gear. But when one wants badly enough to see a cardinal, even an elbow will do. When one needs to see cardinals, somehow cardinals do appear.

  Did it happen last night while I slept? We can’t exactly say when it happened, only that it happened in winter, and that it was not until the snow melted and we sent the piano tuner out to the Hexagon did we know what had happened.

  I picture them pulling up in a van. Olive Thayer, parting the curtains, thinks, This is like the Community, to let these people who have nowhere to go, stay for the night—it is so cold, and so late.

  They must have looked like lovers carrying blankets into the Hexagon, where they would huddle for the night under the baby grand. But instead they took the baby grand. Lifted it carefully into the van and disappeared in the night. An entire Steinway piano slipped away in the night while the four of us slept.

  “There’s no piano in there,” the piano tuner from Pittsfield said, his tools dangling at his side.

  This is how life is, I have learned—not just at Cummington, but everywhere. It is a world where it is perfectly possible at any moment for an entire piano to disappear into thin air and never be heard from again. Or almost never. On learning the news, my friend Karen changed this disaster into a bit of art:

  Not everything disappears, I suppose.

  I think of Gene. He could change the sounds of our lovemaking into music. He could turn the radio news into music. He could turn the wind in the trees into music.

  How odd that only after hearing the music he composed while we were together did I realize how much he had loved me.

  I listened to the strange and beautiful composition early one winter morning and knew. The bass line sounded like descending bells. He could make sounds never heard before, from instruments never invented.

  “I hear you breathing, I hear your breath. Your breath is with me still,” he wrote me in a letter. “I hear your laugh.”

  It was all there. The way he loved, finally, unconditionally, and with great purity. His wit, his desire, his particular regret, his wife, his children, it was all there . . .

  “I have your laugh, your laugh is with me always.”

  Eugene, I did love you—but only after hearing the music did I realize it.

  “We have made a shape together, Caroline,” he said, “and it is ours forever.”

  Forever

  I was here. I touched your hand. We loved each other. We tried not to be afraid. You painted. I tried to put a few real words on a page. This is what it meant to be alive.

  We lived very hard. We loved everything: flesh, earth, water, sky. We were hurt often. But we loved the world and it was good.

  You painted. I tried to put a few words on a page. I learned words I never wanted to have to know—the solid rocket boosters, the blood-brain barrier. We tried not to be afraid. There was red. It was too much. I was frightened of the things there were still no names for, the things yet to come. We loved each other. We needed to say something. We did our best. There wasn’t enough time.

  When we were young we learned math together. We learned that two take away one equals one. I am afraid.

  We wanted to live long. I put a few words on a page. You painted—a man, a cloud, a diamond ring, a hospital bed, a horse with wings.

  Max Speaks Again

  “My baby girl. My only daughter. My love. I used to sit by your crib. Watch light move through the slats.

  “And later? What was I later but a tired, crabby old giant, with such a small child to care for. Wife: deceased. Sons: in boarding school up the Hudson.

  “Caroline, I did my best.”

  Jesus with Palm and Thistle

  They wave palm fronds back and forth as he enters the dark city. “Hosanna,” they say to him “Hosanna in the highest. Behold, the son of God.” Jesus rides through the town on a mule obeying the orders of his moody madman father. He looks through the jail of palm. He feels feverish. “Stop,” he says. He feels a little woozy.

  “Why have you forsaken me?” Jesus weeps. He’s so thin. Dragging his bag of fish. He wears a wreath of rosemary around his head. “That’s for remembrance, Mother,” he says, delirious.

  He’s seeing things. He leaves his own face on the towel of a woman. He starts to hear voices. “You are my son and you are dying,” his father says. “Save me,” he begs. “Look to your brothers,” his father says.

  He holds a staff of thistle. It has the power, he’s heard
, to cure any disease, even the plague.

  He hallucinates his way across the landscape. He enters the late twentieth century dragging his bag of tricks—his basket of fragments, his fish and thistle.

  A star blooms on his forehead like some dark horse. He looks to his brothers, anorectic and dying. “Stay a little,” he says, putting his hands on their chests. He waves his thistle like a wand and weeps. “Stay a little.” He can’t save anyone.

  “Wake,” he pleads, “wake.” He’s desperate. He tries everything he can think of. “This is the cup of my blood,” he says. He closes his eyes. “Arise.” He opens them. “I am the Lamb of God,” he says. “I am the Bread of Life.” He turns away. “Listen,” he says, “you’re too young to die.” But nothing works.

  “Please,” he begs, “one more minute. I love you. Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

  The Black Tulip

  “Oude Niedorp, The Netherlands—A black tulip, flowering at midnight, sounds like something from an old Dutch fairy tale. But it happened in the tiny village (pop. 300) of Oude Niedorp, a one-windmill town about 35 miles northwest of Amsterdam. And after a month of newspaper interviews, Geert Hageman, the 29-year-old horticulturist who developed the new black tulip, is still euphoric about this somber variety of his national flower.

  “‘It was about 12:30 on Feb. 18,’ Mr. Hageman recounted. ‘I had already looked once or twice at this group of tulips, and then I saw it. I couldn’t tell anybody—my wife was sleeping—so I walked around drinking a beer . . .’”

  Steven laughs.

  “Mr. Hageman allowed the black flower to bloom for 14 days, then cut it and the foliage off at the base. Tulip blooms take strength away from their bulbs and eventually kill them and the bulb is the important thing in multiplying hybrid tulips.

  “The mother tulip, Queen of the Night, is the color of egg-plant. The father, Wienerwald, was shorter and darker, but had a white border around the petals. Their offspring, the new black tulip, was 40 centimeters tall—about 16 inches—and nearly opaque purplish-black. Or was it blackish-purple? If so, ‘It’s a very, very dark shade of purple,’ Mr. Hageman said. ‘If you were holding my tulip against something pure black, you might say it was a light shade of black. I think it’s the blackest tulip anyone’s ever seen.’

  “Jacques Henneman, the marketing manager of the International Bulb Center, an independent trade organization in Hillegom, said: ‘There were two or three black tulips before: La Tulipe Noire, which appeared in 1891, and Queen of the Night, which appeared in 1955. But in nature it is very difficult to breed black varieties.’

  “Kees van Ness, a horticulturist at the Laboratory for Bulb Research in Lisse, took a good look at the Hageman tulip at the flower show. He carefully avoided the word black when asked for his opinion. ‘It’s a very dark tulip,’ he said. ‘It’s the darkest I’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the darkest of all. But of course, people have been looking for the darkest tulips they can make since 1600.’”

  Maggie Reads to Alison

  “Mountain View, California, February 10—In a cataclysmic drama played out once every 76 years, Halley’s Comet has swept to within 55 miles of the surface of the Sun, and once again has been hurled back toward exile in the furthest reaches of the solar system, renewing a cycle as old as history.

  “Even now, as it begins another 7 billion mile trip out beyond Neptune and back, the famous comet’s ice is flashing into hot gas, its dust is being blasted away and pockets of trapped gas are exploding into enormous spectacular tails. The comet is at its biggest and its best.

  “Unfortunately, this historic period of perihelion, one of the greatest shows in the solar system, is happening on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth. The comet will not be visible to Earthbound viewers again until next month.”

  The Final Shape

  There’s a shape I’ve seen my whole life, in dreams. It’s changed only slightly through time, but it’s definitely changed. It’s changing now.

  “You are moving toward the perfect shape,” a voice says, but I don’t know who’s speaking. I can’t make out who it is.

  “It is the shape of your death.”

  How will I know when I have seen the final shape?

  “You’ll remember it.”

  From where?

  “It is the shape of your mother’s womb.”

  The Night of Pity and Self-Loathing

  It’s a bitterly cold and clear night.

  Max calls. “What’s new?” he says.

  “The weather’s new. It’s ten below,” I say.

  “That’s only with the windchill factor, my dear. We were never as cold until they discovered that damned windchill factor. Now an entire generation has grown up believing in ten below zero.”

  “How’s the East Village?” you ask.

  “Same,” I say.

  “Come over, I’ll make you dinner.”

  “Will Biddy be there?”

  “No. She’s gone home to Virginia for a few weeks.”

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll see you soon.”

  I stop by Balducci’s on my way. Eye all the weird things you love: grouse, pheasant, buffalo, quail. I decide to buy cheese that’s wrapped in a leaf.

  This night reminds me of a winter night long ago. The temperatures way below freezing, the wind harsh, the snow kissing us. The street glittering. “Careful, Dad, of the ice,” I said, holding his hand. “That’s not ice, Caroline, that’s glass.”

  To mistake glass for ice.

  He’s in a heavy gray sweater. The house is warm. He smells comforting, safe, he smells of alcohol and pipe tobacco. I kiss him on the cheek. I hand him the cheese.

  He unwraps it. “Oh, my whimsy,” he says. “Cheese wrapped in a leaf.”

  We go into the kitchen, where he is making some confection. “How about a drink?”

  “Sure. What are you making?”

  “Oeufs à la neige,” he says.

  Before my eyes, my father molds meringue with two large spoons into oval shapes, perfect eggs. “Oh, they’re so beautiful!” I say. He smiles. “They really are, aren’t they?”

  He makes me a drink. We settle into our familiar spots, two chairs next to the fire. I love him. I want him to know this and so, though I do not care, I ask him, “How is Biddy?” Also it is easy conversation. It is a way around this impending feeling of I don’t know what.

  “Ah, Biddy,” he says. “She is a young woman intimately involved in the romance of failure, in struggle as an art form. She has made the deliberate choice of a career she has not the talent or instinct for, and she continues to pursue it, though the odds are against even a good actor. But the overwhelming need seems to be the struggle, the starving, the sacrificing for that noble thing called Art. A whole career or noncareer passionately pursued and founded on a fancy. A compliment from a teacher in fifth grade. A lead role in an Easter pageant, a smattering of applause, a need to be seen. Of course, this did not cover up the fact that there was no talent there, no feel for the thing, no natural ability.

  “Oh, it’s tiresome, Caroline, tiresome. How much nicer to have you here tonight. She cannot decipher a good script from a bad one.” He sighs. “No matter what degree of desire, sincerity, diligence, there is no way in—her wit, her intelligence does not permit it.” He sighs again, getting up, “And yet she refuses to give it up. Am I making any sense? You look a little baffled, dear. Do I seem to be making sense?” He pats me on the head.

  “Oh, the tenacious nature of some young people! The young are so stubborn! so fierce!”

  For dinner he has made sautéed foie gras with curly endive. A sherry vinaigrette with shallots, garnished with crescents of mango. For the main course, garlic-and-thyme encrusted halibut, roasted potatoes and braised rhubarb stems. It all looks so beautiful.

  On the CD player: Der Rosenkavalier.

  “Perfection as always,” I say, lifting my glass to him.

  “Taste it first, my dear.”


  “I went to see Der Rosenkavalier at the Met last week,” he says. “Do you remember the end of the first act? So poignant. The Marschallin sits at her mirror, worrying about her lover, feeling mortal. The curtain starts to fall and there’s that incredible cadence Strauss created to accompany its drop—well, inevitably, the other night as well, it was lost in applause. If only people could actually listen, instead of relying on the conditioned response: they see the curtain going down and they begin to clap their hands. Sometimes I think they’re no better than dogs . . . That moment was ruined for me, at any rate.”

  I smile. “You are even more opinionated in real life than you are in my imagination, Max.”

  “Oh my dear, I suppose I’m not the easiest of fathers.”

  No. He hadn’t been the easiest of fathers. That could be said with certainty. But I could not imagine life with anyone else. He made all other lives unimaginable. Dismissable. Those poor slobs who clapped because the curtain went down. I held it against him sometimes, but there was no denying I loved the life he suggested to me.

  He was passionately urban, almost archetypically so. He loved Manhattan and what only Manhattan could offer him. He was so relentless, so demanding. “Caroline,” he’d say, “what do you think of Ping Chong? What about Robert Wilson? Pina Bausch? Maguy Marin? Charles Ludlum? Liz LeCompte? James Lapine? What do you think is going on in these new David Salles? How about the Jennifer Bartlett show? What do you see? What do you see? What about Martha Clark’s Garden of Earthly Delights?”

  He talks about the death of the riddler, the guy who slowly turns champagne bottles to bring the yeast to the top. “I heard,” he says, “that there’s a new process that will make riddling obsolete.