Drawing Lessons

by Julia Gabriel

  “She knows everyone better than they know themselves.”

  “It’s good to have a friend like that. Sam—the woman who was with me at your mother’s event—is that person for me.”

  Wait … is Luc Marchand ... confiding in me? The room felt perfectly still to her all of a sudden, and quiet. The only thing she was aware of was the feeling of his hand covering hers, firm and warm.

  “And do you listen to everything she says?” she asked.

  Luc chuckled, and slid his hand slowly off of hers. The sensation was so exquisite, it was almost painful. “Eventually. Sometimes she has to, you know, whack me over the head a few times first.”

  He flipped over a new sheet of paper on her sketchpad and began to methodically draw. The moment, whatever it had been, was over now. Marie watched as a perfect reproduction of her hand appeared, with its ragged thumbnail and scar, the pale shading of her bruise.

  “I’ll never be able to do that,” she said when he set his pencil down.

  “I think you will,” he said, “if you want to. Art won’t simply bestow itself upon you, Marie. You have to beg and plead for it to visit you. Then, when it turns on its heel and walks away, you have to throw yourself at its feet and weep.”

  What would it take to get him to bestow another kiss on her? Begging? Pleading? Whatever it was, she was prepared to offer it. Marie had never done anything harder than smoke a cigarette at high school parties, but she was beginning to understand the nature of addiction. She would throw herself at his feet and weep. Yes, she would do even that.

  Chapter 7

  “My leg is falling asleep, Uncle Luc.” Ellie Smith fidgeted impatiently on the stool in Luc’s studio, tugging at her black velvet dress, then the pearl choker clinging to her neck.

  “Just another minute, chérie, and you can rest,” Luc said soothingly. He daubed ochre paint onto the canvas, then swiftly blended it with his brush.

  “He’s almost done with the hair, sweetie,” Sam chimed in.

  “God, mom, do not call me sweetie. At least not in public. Please!”

  “I’m pretty sure my studio doesn’t count as ‘in public,’” Luc said, smiling into his canvas.

  Ellie was Sam’s twelve-year-old daughter. He leaned in toward the canvas and brushed in highlights on the hair. Ellie was a miniature version of her mother, graceful and composed beyond her years. If Luc ever had a daughter, he’d want her to be like Ellie. If Grace hadn’t … he choked on the thought.

  A snippet of piano sonata pierced the air. “Is that mine?” Ellie called over to her mother, who was sunk deep into the faded upholstery of Luc’s most comfortable chair.

  Samantha shook her head as she answered her own phone. Luc smiled in amusement at Ellie’s disappointment. She was a popular girl, according to her mom and dad.

  He painted for a minute more, capturing the thick dark blonde hair that Ellie had inherited from her mother. “There. Got it. You can rest now, Ellie.”

  Ellie slid down from the stool on which she’d been perched and grimaced as she stretched her stiff arms and back.

  “Mom, can I have my phone?” she asked before heading into the tiny studio bathroom.

  “Are you doing any other Christmas portraits this year?” Sam asked.

  Ellie’s portrait was to be a gift for Sam’s parents.

  “Did a few over the summer. But no more on the horizon at this point,” he replied. An image of Marie Witherspoon in a black velvet dress, posed perfectly still for him, flashed through his mind.

  “Are you working on anything new?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Sam was silent for a minute. “I’m going out on a limb here for you, opening a new gallery with a one-man show for you.”

  He nodded and squeezed out more paint. “I know that, Sam. I appreciate it. I’ll have new work for you. I promise.”

  Sam looked around the studio, her eyes slowly scanning the room. “It’s just that I don’t see anything in progress.”

  “I’m still in the study phase.”

  She looked at him skeptically. “I need a whole show’s worth.”

  “I’ll have it for you. I promise.”

  Sam walked over to the bathroom door, rapped sharply on the wood. “Ellie? Luc is waiting.”

  When she returned to her seat next to Luc, she asked, “The Witherspoon girl? Did she decide to take lessons with you after all?”

  Luc was surprised Sam remembered.

  “Yes.” Luc rubbed his aching fingers, then lined up his brushes. “She did.”

  Sam watched him fuss with the easel, silently debate one brush versus another, and unroll and re-roll his sleeves. Then she spoke.

  “Keep that professional, Luc.”

  “You’ve already told me who she is.”

  “I know. I’m just escalating the threat level. It’s an ugly situation all around, from what I hear. Her parents were shocked by the divorce, apparently. Totally gobsmacked. Rumor always had it that they practically arranged the marriage to begin with.”

  “I didn’t realize people still did that these days.” Luc pretended to look closely at the canvas.

  “You don’t want to get mixed up in that, is all I’m saying. I have a new corporate client who’s interested in art lessons. She’s divorced. Not too bad looking. Has her own money.”

  “No offense, Sam, but I’m French. I need a little mystique, a woman who understands the fine art of seduction. These rich women you send me are about as seductive as the suburban tanks they all drive.”

  “Ah, you want a Citroen kind of woman. Quirky but elegant.”

  “Yes, I do. A Citroen DS.” He chuckled. “I want a déesse. A quirky, elegant goddess.”

  “Don’t know if I can find you one of those around here.”

  Sam and Luc looked in unison toward the bathroom, where Ellie had just emerged.

  “Ellie, dear? Do you think you can manage another fifteen or twenty minutes? Enough for Luc to get started on the arms and shoulders?” Sam asked.

  As Luc painted, Ellie’s face wavered between boredom and barely-restrained giggles. His child would have been eleven this year. Every time he thought of it, the crack in his heart widened a little further.

  * * *

  After Sam and Ellie left, he tidied up the studio and returned to the house, where he opened a bottle of burgundy. He slumped into a chair at the dining table and stared into the glass of wine. Sam was right to be worried. He had no new work of his own, work that wasn’t commissioned by clients, underway—and he was running out of time to meet Sam’s deadline. For a while there, her permits and other paperwork had been mired in city bureaucracy. But they’d been sprung free and things were moving again.

  He needed some ideas, that was all.

  He fiddled with the edge of a sheet of sketch paper lying on the table, folding a corner back and forth until it tore off. He flipped the sheet over. It was a drawing of Marie Witherspoon. He’d made it after last weekend’s lesson with her, two days of almost unbearable awkwardness. She had wanted him to kiss her. It had been written all over her face. And he had, once, after dinner. But that had been to help her draw, not for her pleasure or his own.

  Not that it hadn’t been pleasurable. It most certainly had been. So pleasurable that he had wanted to kiss her over and over, then take her back to his bed and fuck into the wee hours of the morning.

  But that probably wasn’t a good idea, fucking Marie Witherspoon. For all the reasons Sam had enumerated, plus several more. He owed this woman three months of drawing instruction. Sleeping with her could endlessly complicate those three months, months when he needed to finish a lot of work for Sam.

  But god he wanted to.

  He held his empty wine glass up to the light. He needed to behave himself around Marie Witherspoon. It sounded as though her entire life had been mapped out for her and she’d just been following the GPS, until her marriage took a wrong exit. He wanted to help her draw—she had some talent, actually, unli
ke the wealthy housewives Sam sent his way—but that was as far as he should take it.

  He refilled his glass and took a long slug, letting the wine’s heavy spiciness work its way into his veins, then leaned back in the chair and regarded the sketch some more. Despite being drawn in a matter of minutes, he liked it. With only her shoulders, breasts and part of her torso, it reminded him of a broken piece of ancient statuary. Venus. Aphrodite. Déesse.

  Chapter 8

  Luc was standing on the endlessly-climbing Dupont Circle metro escalator, slowly ascending up into the sunshine as if being reborn from the maw of hell. Washington’s subway system was particularly charmless, as far as public transportation systems went, though Luc supposed it did accurately capture the side of Washington that was dark, underground, its very blandness designed to divert attention.

  Above ground, Luc rather liked Washington, DC. Parts of it felt very European to him, the classically-inspired buildings, the understated scale of the skyline. There were no skyscrapers in Washington, forbidden by an act of Congress. He imagined that lots of Americans would be horrified by the anti-capitalist heavy handedness of such a decree—if they were aware of it, which of course they were not—but Luc was glad of it for himself. He could never imagine himself living in New York, say, in those deep canyons of glass and concrete, or in San Francisco with its endless hills of sun-bleached buildings.

  It made sense to him that Washington had been designed by a Frenchman.

  He zipped up his leather jacket as he strolled the blocks from Metro to Q and 21st Streets. The October sunshine was deceiving. The air was much chillier than it looked, almost as chilly as Luc’s disposition. He’d been painting like a fiend since Sunday, determined not to let Sam down. She’d forgiven him many things, but wrecking the opening of her new gallery wouldn’t likely be one of them.

  But he needed a few hours break, a respite from the pressures of his studio. The Phillips Collection, tucked away just a few blocks from the busy-ness and traffic of Connecticut Avenue, had long been Luc’s favorite museum in the U.S. It reminded him of his grandfather’s home in Paris with its gracious old rooms and walls hung with impressionist and early modernist paintings. Luc paid the admission fee and bounded up the winding staircase to the third floor, the special exhibitions gallery.

  He peered inside the white-walled room. Alistair Smith & Elizabeth Calhoun: A Model Revealed. He glanced around. Large portraits. He’d never heard of either Alistair Smith or Elizabeth Calhoun. That was all the recommendation he needed. He felt the need to see something unfamiliar and fresh, something that might prove to be the lightning bolt of inspiration he needed for Sam’s show.

  He strolled the perimeter of the room, casually taking in the paintings. He ignored the framed, handwritten letters paired with each. The canvases varied in size. Some were small and square, no more than twelve inches on each side. Others were large, nearly life size. All of them depicted a female model but in none of them was her face visible. In the large portraits, her head was turned away from the artist or her face obscured by a large hat or a scarf blowing in the wind. Many of the smaller paintings were partial nudes, a ribbed torso or softly-curving hip or the elegantly muscled slope of a calf. There was a coy secrecy about all of them that was appealing to him.

  He headed back to the beginning of the exhibit. He liked to look at the works before reading a curator’s explanation. He wanted his own impression to be his first.

  “Alistair Smith was a relatively unknown American artist living in New York in the 1940s when he met Elizabeth Calhoun, the wife of U.S. Senator Teddy Calhoun. For decades, the identity of the woman in Smith’s paintings was a mystery and the artist himself refused to say who she was, taking the secret to his grave. Finally, when Elizabeth Calhoun passed away in 2001 and her children discovered boxes of correspondence between Elizabeth and Alistair Smith, the mystery woman was unmasked. For nearly fifteen years, Elizabeth had been Alistair’s lover, muse and mystery model. Last year, the estates of Calhoun and Smith generously gave their correspondence and his paintings to the Phillips Collection. This exhibit marks the first time that the letters and paintings have been publicly shown together.”

  Luc returned to the paintings. This time he leaned in to read the letters, some of which were penned in a thin, spidery script and others in a blockier, more masculine hand.

  Dear A, I am drowning in the dullness that is Washington. Nothing here interests me now, not since meeting you. I mark off every hour as it passes, for it is one less hour until I see you again. Who was the genius who decided that there should be twenty-four tedious hours in every day? Will you paint me when we meet? You were hesitant when I broached the idea before. Please reconsider ... your loving E.

  The letter was hung next to a pencil study, a quickly-drawn sketch that showed Elizabeth Calhoun walking toward the viewer, her face fully visible. He stepped back to look up at the tall painting. Elizabeth was dressed in a simple brown skirt that skimmed her calves, low-heeled oxfords, and an ivory blouse that draped suggestively over her breasts. A yellow scarf covered her hair. Unlike the study, however, the painting showed her looking back over her shoulder, her long neck stretching away from prying eyes.

  My dear, sweet El -- It is not that I do not wish to paint you -- please never think that -- there is nothing I do more than contemplate painting those stormy grey eyes -- your rose-flush cheeks -- when I am done with that, I have but mere minutes left in my day -- no, sweet El -- it is exposing you I fear -- for me, I worry nothing -- I am no one -- a failed artist, merely -- I am ever your A.

  Ah well. Luc saw the compromise. Alistair would paint Elizabeth, but never show her face. A doomed love affair. Sam had suggested to him once that that was what Grace had wanted. Not a love affair, but a doomed love affair.

  He skipped over several other large portraits in favor of the smaller, partial nudes. He stopped in front of six grouped together on the wall. Long, slender fingers cupped around an apple. The small of a back. Hair cascading over a shoulder. The point of a hipbone. The curve of a delicate ear and the swoop of a jawline. The lush, ripe swell of breasts.

  He had painted Grace many times; she had begged him to, just as Elizabeth Calhoun had apparently begged Alistair Smith. Most of those paintings were gone, sold by Sam to people who collected such things. Luc was a coward in that regard. He couldn’t bear to keep them but neither could he bear to burn them, as he should have. Instead, they now belonged to other people, a circumstance Sam was certain Grace would have been thrilled with.

  He frowned at the small paintings on the wall. Is this what Elizabeth Calhoun would have wanted, her hips and breasts hanging on the wall of a museum? He turned away, to return to one of the larger, clothed portraits. But the nudes drew him back again. He had drawn Grace’s breasts over and over. She had wanted it, of course, but it had given him great pleasure too. Elizabeth Calhoun’s breasts were nothing like Grace’s, of course. Grace had been small and thin, all planes and angles, her breasts the tiny buds of an angel.

  Elizabeth Calhoun’s breasts were full, plush, ripe like a wanton fruit whose juices would spill over one’s lips and chin if one were rash enough to take a bite.

  My dearest E, the letter next to the paintings read, man has not invented pillows so soft as yours -- when may I again rest my weary head on them?

  Luc was struck by a sudden vision of Marie Witherspoon’s breasts in the moment before he settled his cheek against them. Or what he imagined to be Marie Witherspoon’s breasts, for he hadn’t seen them of course. Even so, he knew that Marie’s shape was closer to Elizabeth Calhoun than Grace had been. He drew in a sharp breath, and the memory of Marie’s perfume came back to him. He hadn’t realized he’d even noticed her perfume.

  He tore himself away from Elizabeth Calhoun’s body, hurrying down the stairs to the bottom floor cafe. He curtly—rudely—ordered an espresso from the young man behind the counter and took it out onto the terrace, where he collapsed into a cold metal chair
.

  His brain was crowded with Marie Witherspoon. Suddenly everything reminded him of her. The leaves on that tree over there, the same rusty copper shade of her hair. The espresso, with the same burnt aftertaste of her kiss. It had been three days since he’d seen her last, and he didn’t think he’d make it until Saturday and her next lesson with him.

  Fuck it. He pulled out his phone and tapped her name on his contact list.

  Chapter 9

  Marie was typing thank you letters to the silent auction donors and wondering when she would get to Luc Marchand’s name, when her mother barged into her office.

  “Marie dear, I need to cancel lunch today. I’m sorry. I have a last minute appointment in Potomac. Maybe tomorrow?”

  Marie nodded. “Tomorrow is fine. Who’s the meeting with?”

  “The Hadley School. I’ve been trying to get in there all year.”

  “Well, good luck then.”

  Her mother tilted her perfectly-coiffed head to one side and frowned. “How are you doing these days? I feel like you slip in and out of here. I barely see you some weeks.”

  “Mother. We talk every day.”

  “About business, yes. But not about your life.”

  Marie’s inner child was rolling her eyes. “No, I haven’t heard from Richard lately. Nor do I expect to. You and dad need to let go of that idea.”

  Eileen sighed. “It’s not too late for the two of you to call off the divorce.”

  “You’re speaking to the wrong person about that. I wasn’t the one who initiated the divorce.” Marie turned toward her computer, a hint to her mother.

  “But you could call him once in awhile. Keep the door open.”

  Marie fumed as she listened to her mother’s heels click down the hall, then down the staircase to the front door. It was a good thing she cancelled lunch if that was what she had wanted to talk about. Marie seriously doubted that Richard would welcome the occasional phone call from her. The subject of their marriage was closed, as far as Marie was concerned. She had closed that door, flipped the deadbolt, and wedged a chair beneath the doorknob.