The Art Lover

by Carole Maso

  “‘It was a lousy job anyway,’ those riddlers are saying. ‘We’re sorry we took it in the first place.’”

  He remembers Nixon, still president, in an air-conditioned room, the fireplace going, his bum leg propped up.

  We drank and drank and ate course after course and became dizzy with the array of names. Let’s talk about this. Now this. What about this? As if talking could save us. “Keep up with me, Caroline, goddamnit.”

  I rest on the subject of food for a moment. Something he always loved to gossip about. “Did you hear what’s just in at Ottomanelli’s? Have you been by the Florence Meat Market? At the Italian store they’ve got mozzarella in corroza . . . Well, it’s the preciousness I detest,” he says. “The rising intolerance in people like you and me. The need for an extra, then an extra-extra, then an extra-extra-extra virgin olive oil at every turn. What is wrong with us? Would you like another mango, my dear, or how about a braised rhubarb stem?”

  I close my eyes and his oeufs à la neige float before me in the darkness, those perfect, cloudy, lighter-than-air eggs.

  You saw the figure 5 in gold, I think to myself.

  Sooner or later we get to the fiddleheads, as always. A dream of spring. Invariably I’d ask to hear again about Mother as a small child in Canada eating fiddleheads. “Well, that’s how we got them in this country, you know,” he’d say. “The French Canadians brought them down.” I think of my mother with a handful of emerald spirals. I wonder why this somehow was not enough to make her want to live.

  “Caroline, you’re drifting off.”

  “I’m a little drunk,” I say.

  “Nonsense. Well, I am too, but just a little.” He smiles.

  I amuse him, I think. He wants to know how the East Village is. If I’ve seen anything I might call art over there. He wants to know about my psychotherapy. “Don’t forget it all started with Freud, that inventor of penis envy, anatomy as destiny, female masochism. Oh, the feminists do have their work cut out for them and maybe they will have some impact, some degree of success. But don’t expect this therapy business to work in your lifetime, Caroline. It’s a primitive art, based on lies.

  “You dream you are a tightrope walker in the circus. It means: your father never loved you. You could never please him. You had to work hard to keep your balance. You dream of a field of flowers. It means you want to lie yourself down like a carpet and be stepped on.”

  “Max, last night I dreamt that a B movie actor decided as a joke to run for president and got elected and then started a zany military program called Star Wars, like the movie, while everyone on the earth was dying or starving to death. A big dome in the sky that would keep out all the bad guys.”

  “It means that you are a paranoid schizophrenic, Caroline. It means they will lock you away forever.”

  “I’m going away, Max, next week, to the country for the spring.”

  “Where?” he asks. I think the idea of the country amuses him.

  “An artist colony in the Berkshires—Western Massachusetts.” I know the idea of an artist colony amuses him.

  “A colony of artists,” he says. He raises his eyebrows. “Well now, isn’t that a novel, as it were, idea?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Max.”

  “Are you thinking of writing again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That’s good. When did you say you were leaving?”

  “Next week.”

  “Oh, my whimsy,” he says, “my cherub. Let’s move into the other room, shall we?” We go into the front room and sit next to the fire. “What can I get you, my sweet? Cognac? Biscotti di vino? Figs? Cheese wrapped in a leaf?”

  “Cognac, please. And perhaps a fig.”

  “Your mother had a cat named Fig, you know.”

  “I was there. I remember that cat, Dad.”

  Call me Max, you said when I was seven. You were Dad, or more often, Father until then.

  “Dad.”

  “Call me Max.”

  You ran out of patience often with us, Max. You refused to humor us. Remember the time David came home with one of those weekly newspapers written for grade schoolers with the headline “It can be fun to raise bananas at home.” You looked at it and said, “No, I cannot see how it could be fun to raise bananas at home.” And David bursting into tears and saying, “If Mother were here,” those four wounding words. And you the cruel realist. Tyrant. Monster. “But she is not here.” And then Grey would begin to cry, and David in some corner swearing at you, pouring water into various pots, measuring cups, jars.

  I appreciated it though, Max, that you spoke your mind when you could, that you did not lie. That you let us know how you saw things; it was something for us to see against, if necessary.

  For that was the fact of the matter, as you put it, the fact of the matter: Mother was not here. What one did with that information was entirely one’s own choice. What you did was offer some possibilities, some clues toward a way to proceed. You tried to teach us something about art, its consoling nature, its transcendent nature, its ability to help distance.

  The attempts: to paint her back into a body, lengthen her thick dark hair and climb it, use it as a rope ladder out of here.

  The attempts: to look for her in every other woman.

  The attempt: to forget her. The attempt: to forgive her. But it did not seem possible to do either.

  To look for her in every other woman. “I looked for her in all of them.”

  “Did you really, Max?”

  “Caroline, please.”

  Ask about his work. “Then your work. How is your work going? I read your piece in Art Forum.”

  “It is a different approach, that is all. It’s the process of entering into the understanding that you may be completely off base, and that’s all right. I’m working on a method that lets other variables in, things that independently, given a narrow field, would most likely not occur to the viewer.

  “You’re very beautiful,” he says. “That curve there. The openness of the forehead, the lidded eye. The sensuous mouth. If you could just look down for a minute. If you would just move a little to the right, you would be in the perfect light. The tension between your smooth arm and the curtain, the transparency of eye and window . . . If you could move just a bit.”

  “No, Max. She needed a husband.”

  “A husband was one of the things she needed, yes.”

  “She needed you to treat her other than as an object of beauty, of art. She needed you, Max.

  “Did you try to keep her at a distance by putting her on canvas, turning her into something else?”

  “It’s more complicated, Caroline. Painting her brought her sadness nearer to me too; I could feel it more keenly, I understood it better. Until it in some way became unbearable for me too, and I had to stop.”

  “You could have continued.”

  “No, I lacked the courage. I couldn’t do it.

  “I loved her very much. And such a hatred I had for everything after she died! Contempt for art and artists. For women, restaurants, plays, films. My contempt for you children. How I hated your teary faces! My God, Caroline, that one woman could do such damage.”

  “Come on, Max, that’s not completely true. You know that.”

  “You’re right, of course.” He lit his pipe.

  “I remember her earrings shaped like fish.”

  “Yes, indeed. A Pisces through and through, your mother.”

  “I remember her lips imprinted on a tissue floating in the toilet bowl. I loved those lip imprints. She would leave them blotted on a tissue on my pillow at night sometimes. Did you know that, Max, about Mom?”

  “No,” he said quietly, wrinkling his brow, smiling slightly.

  “Ah, ma dormeuse,” he whispers. “She was dying right there before my eyes and I, like some fool, some blind man, just kept painting and painting her. And don’t think she didn’t notice it, she saw it—that I was painting her back into a life she could not live.
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  “There was no going back, after her. The rest were vacant compared to her—their beautiful bodies or extreme kindness was some sort of consolation. She was smart, she was so beautiful, but what good was it?”

  “I don’t remember her being smart or beautiful. I just remember her being my mother, that’s all. I remember her breasts, her lap, her hands moving through water. Her lips. We played Huckle Buckle Beanstalk and Qui Suis-Je? This is what I remember: she cried us to sleep. She prayed to Mary. She loved the stars.

  “Did we ever have a garden in the country, Max? Sometimes I have this image of Mom and I out there growing all kinds of things—vegetables, tulips. Planting seeds. I seem to remember spending hours and hours there with her. Could that be true?”

  “I’m afraid not, Caroline. Your mother never gardened. Your mother never grew anything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He closes his eyes and nods. “I’m sure.

  “I continued same as always. Well not quite but—what is nearly impossible to accept is that she changed everything forever. After all these years, Veronica, I still miss you! Though I am not sure I even remember you accurately anymore, or the things we actually did. The White Horse, the Lion’s Head. The hours and hours of painting. Even you’ve faded, Veronica. Now I have trouble remembering precisely what is no longer the same anymore. But then I’ll look at the paintings, or some other thing will bring you back. I’ve only almost forgotten. I still have an inkling of what it all meant—long ago when we were young. Veronica, we were sweethearts . . .

  “But I have had too much to drink tonight and I am getting morose, ridiculous, as surely these stabs at reconciliation, these stabs at recovering the past, spoken at all are ludicrous—inadequate and too late.”

  “Was there no one who could have taken her place?”

  “Oh, Caroline. Your mother and I were like Canada geese. We mated for life.”

  “Well, not take her place, but you know what I mean, Max. I always wondered how you could dismiss the women you knew, a whole person, in a few words. With the turn of a hand. ‘She is most intelligent,’ you said about the NYU librarian. ‘She has a sharp mind and wit, but her obsessions are fundamentally uninteresting.’

  “And what about Biddy? What contempt you hold her in. What was I to think? How you loathe her! The ready smile, the dog, the thousand changes in makeup and hair, the float tank, the tanning parlor, the total absorption in self, the complete preoccupation with self.”

  “Caroline, I have been doomed to scour the earth looking over and over for the same woman, your mother, Veronica, the missing one, the absent one, the one who most profoundly betrayed me. I’ve never stopped looking for her, regardless of how it has appeared. Every choice never a choice for something, but a choice made in relation to her. This one’s hair is like hers was, thick and wavy and dark, or that one’s hair is not like hers was. Or, they would have been nearly the same age, or, no, she is quite a bit younger even than Veronica was then. Or, Veronica would have never thought of this in that way. With mindlessness I tried to wipe out her mind. With blondeness, her darkness. With emotion, her coldness, her detachment. I worked so hard not to miss her.

  “I miss you, Veronica!” he yells into the room. “All these years I have missed you!”

  He stands. Wavers. Pours us more to drink.

  “We are wounded, symbol-making creatures, Caroline.” He looks at a reproduction on his desk. “So is this or is this not a Caravaggio?

  “Jesus, was this any way to spend precious time on this earth? To spend one’s life quibbling, as it were. My God, was this any way to live? Spewing jargon. The vocabulary of what?

  “She couldn’t think of anything worth doing and I detested her for it.”

  He weeps. “Was that any way to live?”

  “Max,” I say, nearing him, wiping his brow. He picks up a copy of David and Goliath, the painting in question. Groans. Cries. “I think not,” he howls, collapsing in his chair.

  I too begin to cry. “Oh, my cherub,” he says, running his hand through my hair, holding the reproduction in the other hand, quieting down. He kisses me on the forehead. “I think it is finally not a Caravaggio.” He smiles a little. Lights his pipe. “Oh, Caroline. Everywhere, betrayal, betrayal, betrayal.” He puts his pipe down. Puts his face in his hands. “All the time spent thinking about Cézanne or the way Degas worked. What does it amount to? What does it matter?”

  I take his big shoulders. “Max. Dad. That’s all that matters. Degas standing over a stove, pink softening in his hands as he adds color to a slipper or an elbow. That’s all that matters. All that matters, Max, is Chagall painting lovers who could sail over the city in a dream of freedom. Cézanne standing in front of the same mountain year after year. Vermeer!”

  He looks up. “You are right about that, aren’t you, Caroline?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are mine, after all. With your free spirit, your feistiness—so unlike your mother’s. Veronique, never made for this world. The V in her name, heaven bound as soon as it was put down here, even as a baby, my winged angel. Mon ange. V, V, V, V. Flying off even then. But is it heaven she’s gone to?

  “I’m afraid heaven is just some concoction of the brain, a coping mechanism, a way to continue, through all this mire.

  “She wasn’t like you, Caroline, with your sturdy C, caught in the early alphabet.

  “Oh, Veronica, you broke my heart!

  “She simply could not go on. I am quite sure of it.”

  How he hated her sometimes, and us. “Let’s help dress Mommy,” he’d shout, clapping his hands and laughing demonically. She was a statue. Like any in New York. “Come on now, Caroline, don’t be afraid,” you’d say. “Mommy needs help.” And Grey cowering in the next room.

  “What a mistake to bring children into this!” you said.

  “She is not a sack of potatoes, Veronica,” I heard you yell at her once, meaning me.

  “We used to go for walks at night sometimes. She would look into all the windows of the apartments around the park and wish for any of those lives, rather than her own. She would see people eating, people laughing, people reading, putting children to bed. They all seemed so happy to her. ‘I’d take any one of their lives,’ she’d say. ‘I’d give anything not to always be on the outside looking in.’ And then she’d begin to cry.

  “‘Carry me on your back, Max. I can’t go on,’ she’d say, and I’d say to her, ‘But you are too heavy to carry, Veronica.’” He laughs wildly. “‘Your legs are too long, Veronica.’ The pointy toes of her pumps dragging in the concrete. What a mistake to bring children into this. Me carrying you all on my back.

  “There were times she panicked when I had to be somewhere and she would try to prevent me from leaving. She lived in terror of people leaving her. I would be getting into the car and she would follow me down and lie on top of it. Right there in the street, she would put her body over the car’s windshield. I’d start the engine, but she wouldn’t move. I’d scream at her out the window, but she wouldn’t budge . . . It’s twenty-five years since her death and every time I get into my car I’m still looking around her armpit to see.

  “Twenty-five years of this, Veronica. How does one go on, finally?” He shakes his head. “And you, Caroline, our only daughter, you are partially her, a woman who cared nothing about anything, and partially me, an old man full of self-loathing and pity and contempt. It was wrong of us to bring you into the world.”

  “I wouldn’t agree, Max.”

  “Me wanting to love you and your brothers, but never having, never having the nerve. I was so afraid. How terrible to be so afraid.”

  You were always so far away, so distant. What were you afraid of? Did you think I’d betray you too, Max?

  “I loved you too much, Caroline.”

  “I would never have hurt you, Max.”

  “Ah, Caroline—you have no idea.”

  “Max,” I say, “I am not Mother. I do not hold
still for thirty years and then die. I do not.”

  “I was not about to allow you to break my heart, Caroline, I loved her too much. The heart is not a resilient muscle like the poets tell us. I have not the stamina. Not to be father, or lover, or artist. You know best of all, Caroline—to be an artist is to be willing to have your heart broken every day. I am here only to admire the darings of others.”

  He puts his head in his hands and rubs his face. “Such a silly man. Sixty-four. Art historian.”

  “You look tired, Max. I should go. It’s late.”

  “It’s too late,” he says. “I’m your father, I can’t send you into the city at 4 a.m.”

  “I could take a cab.”

  He waves his hand in dismissal. “Stay here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. It’s almost four. So now that that’s settled, would you like a cognac? I think we could use another cognac.”

  He pats my hand. “You will break my heart yet.”

  You’re probably right, I think. It is part of the agreement to live.

  We have cognac. Oeufs à la neige. Figs. Tears of contempt and sadness run down his face.

  One of us will die first. Probably one of us will do unforgivable things to the other. One of us will not be able to make sense of the other. But not tonight.

  He takes my arm. He sees it is flesh and blood. He loves me, allows his heart to break into a thousand pieces. He feeds me cheese in a leaf. He rocks me in his arms. Hums along with Glenn Gould. I hear his astounding heart beating in his chest.

  “I love you,” he whispers.

  “I love you, too, Max,” I whisper back.

  More Winter

  Today I’m thinking how we never learned the things they were best at teaching—to look away, to say no, to want only a little.

  Was it our mistake—that we loved everything so much? I remember you, even during your last stay at the hospital, shuddering with pleasure when we talked of a certain beach. It came back to you nearly complete and you still wanted it, the sun on your back, the feel of the breeze, the cool ocean and all the love in the world.