‘I’ll do anything I can to help her,’ he said.
Penny Dawson Ruiz
I recognized Court the moment I received the Ragdoll Artist photo. She looked just as I’d expect after twenty-five years. I immediately called Joan to confirm the ID.
‘It’s Court, no question,’ I told her.
She told me there’d been some talk about sending me to see Court in Switzerland. Would I be up for that?
‘You bet I would,’ I said.
That evening she called back, then put Jason and Hannah on the line. They introduced themselves, then explained why they thought I was the best person to talk to Court, find out how she was doing, and then, if I thought it appropriate, subtly feel her out about leaving the clinic and returning to the US. They didn’t want to upset her and so, for reasons of security, she wouldn’t know in advance she’d be meeting me. She’d be accompanied by Thérèse, a trusted nurse from the clinic, and another patient, a nineteen-year-old gay kid named Johnny who was the only friend she’d made there in years. They said they knew this meeting would be emotional for us both, but because they weren’t clear about Court’s mental state, they thought it best to keep it low-key.
I told them I understood, and that I hoped that Courtney remembered me as warmly as I remembered her.
The next day Hannah emailed air tickets: Miami–Paris–Zurich with a departure in ten days. It was only then that I understood this was real. I was incredibly excited and eager to do my part.
Johnny Baldwin
It was a dazzling day. Lake Zurich was serene, the water flat and clear. The old man, Karl, who tended to the boats, laughed aloud as he buzzed us around the lake.
‘Karl, please don’t stir up such a wake,’ Thérèse said.
Karl didn’t care. He was having fun. The Cigarette boat purred like a fine automobile. It was Dr DeJ’s favorite, the one he used to scoot around Zürichsee in the early evening with his girlfriends.
I thought Agnès would be scared by so much speed, but she surprised me. She loved it! She stood up so the wind caught her hair. Finally, Thérèse pulled her down. Then, to my astonishment, Agnès reached for my hand. She’d never done that before. She’d always kept her distance. If we happened to touch, it was only by accident. I wondered if she sensed that today would be different. She confirmed that when she whispered in my ear.
‘Something’s going to happen, isn’t it?’
I nodded. ‘Something nice, I think,’ I whispered back.
Penny Dawson Ruiz
I arrived in Zurich jet-lagged. I hadn’t managed to sleep much on the plane. It had been a long journey, my first outside of the States.
After I passed through immigration, I was grateful to find a man in a chauffeur’s cap holding up a sign with my name. He took my bag, escorted me to his car. We drove south of the city to a luxury hotel, Beau Séjour au Lac, where I was to rest and spend the night before the long-anticipated meeting with Court the following afternoon.
I was nervous. Joan had handled the arrangements and so far things had gone well. But I felt foreboding. How well would Court remember me? What would she be like? I knew I’d changed a lot in the intervening years, and assumed she had, too. Yet it seemed she harbored the same obsession. Her ragdolls were clearly linked to the paintings we’d done in the attic of A Caring Place, renditions of duplicitous people who showed blank faces to the world while harboring malice behind their masks.
That evening the clinic nurse, Thérèse, visited me at the hotel. She was friendly, intense yet easy to talk to. Her blond hair was shag-cut like mine, and her blue eyes glowed with compassion.
I listened closely as she briefed me.
‘Agnès, as we all call her at the clinic, has always struck me as lost in her own world. It’s only in the last few months, when she made friends with a gay English boy, that she began to emerge from her shell. I’m not saying she’s normal now. Far from it. You may find her distant. She doesn’t bother much with the social graces. But I think she’ll respond well to you, her only visitor as far as I know in many, many years. At the clinic we have the feeling her family has more or less forgotten about her. I wouldn’t describe her as depressed. She’s on a drug regimen and thus fairly stable. I believe it’s her artwork that keeps her going. It seems to be the only thing that interests her. As she’s told me many times, “My art is my life.”’
‘It always was,’ I said.
Thérèse informed me she hadn’t yet told ‘Agnès’ about my visit. She was saving that for the following day. She, Court and Johnny, the English boy, would arrive in town by motorboat. From the dock they’d walk to the tavern where we’d meet. En route, she’d tell Court I was waiting for her. She didn’t believe Court would balk; if she did, Thérèse would come to tell me so. She promised she wouldn’t leave me sitting there wondering what happened to them.
‘I expect she’ll be happy to see someone from her past, someone she was close to when she was young. I know about the murals you two painted. Hannah and Jason showed me photos. I found them amazing. But with someone in her condition, one can never be certain how she’ll react.’
I asked how she would describe Court’s condition.
She shrugged, admitting she couldn’t define it. Agnès, she said, rarely spoke, and when she did, it was in barely more than a whisper. But her artwork showed great passion, suggesting strong emotions within.
‘Sometimes I wonder if these dolls she makes are visions of how she views herself – placid and inscrutable on the outside, roiling and possessed beneath.’
I asked her about Johnny, the English boy – what was he like?
‘A good kid. Very nice. He puts on this ironic front, referring to himself as a “perverted faggot,” as if to forestall anyone calling him that. He’s gentle with Agnès. No question they’ve been good for one another. They flirt in this cute, playful way.’
I was glad to have met Thérèse and been prepped by her for the meeting. She told me I could easily walk from the hotel to the pub, and drew me a little map to show me the route. At that time of day there’d be few customers. When I arrived, I should take a booth, order something to drink, then wait for them to show up.
Before she left, she told me that the meeting had not been authorized by the clinic director. It was likely he’d get angry if he found out about it. She wanted me to know this was a risk she was willing to take, that she cared a lot about Agnès and believed seeing me again would give her a lift.
‘I’ve set this up, so it’s totally my responsibility,’ she said. ‘If there’s a bad outcome, it’s on me.’
The next morning I took a walk along the lovely shore of Lake Zurich, thinking back to Court’s and my days at Red Raven, the fun we’d had that summer messing around in the art studio, giggling, showing off our skills, hers being quite considerable. Word soon spread around camp that there was a girl who could draw your likeness in two minutes flat. Court loved doing caricatures. She drew several of camp staff, and a mean one of a haughty girl named Amanda whom we both disliked.
We played softball, canoed, swam, but spent most of our days making art. The air was hot and muggy, and there were lots of bugs. We were both bitten up pretty good. What I remember best was the feeling that, finally, I’d found a friend who shared my interests, and in whom I could confide. By the end of summer, to our surprise and delight, we discovered our periods were in sync.
At three p.m. I was seated in a booth at the Schwarze Katzenbar waiting for them to show up. The tavern was dark, and, as Thérèse predicted, there were barely any customers. I ordered a beer and looked around. The walls were covered with stuffed fish. Suddenly, the door opened, a shaft of light cut across the floor, and there stood Court, Thérèse on one side, Johnny on the other, the three of them blinking, their eyes adjusting to the gloom.
Court spotted me, stared and then her face broke into a smile.
‘Pen!’
I stood. ‘Court!’
She ran to me, hugged me. We
held each other close. Her body felt thin. I could feel her shoulder blades beneath her blouse. We embraced the way we did twenty-five years before in that little attic room after we’d been working for hours on the walls. It was our ritual end-of-work embrace when we decided to break for the night. Feeling her in my arms, I remembered the last time we hugged, our ritual broken by a pair of burly cops who came charging up the ladder and then pulled us apart. I remember how we both screamed bloody murder. I remember punching and scratching the guy holding me, while I watched Court crying out and wriggling as the other one pulled her backwards down the ladder. Then the cop who had hold of me pulled me down too. Chaos! It was the end for us. And now here we were, in our forties, hugging it out in this strange dark pub in Switzerland, and it was as if no time had passed between.
We stood back, peered into each other’s eyes. Hers looked clear, with crow’s feet at the sides and a crease of concern in between.
‘You look the same, just older,’ I told her.
‘We’re both older,’ she whispered. ‘I think that’s just fine.’
Once we settled down, I asked her how her life was going, while also telling her a little about mine. She looked distressed when I told her about losing my husband, and seemed fascinated by my description of Key West, the local art colony, my framing shop, how I went everywhere on a rusty old bike, and about my painted-to-sell watercolor seascapes and my personal work which was now totally abstract.
This is going well. She’s relating, I thought.
‘I never imagined I’d end up an abstract painter,’ I told her. ‘It just kinda happened. Making all those watercolors burned me out on representation. Just as well. I was never as good a draughtsman as you. You know you’ve become quite famous on account of your dolls. You’re known as the Ragdoll Artist.’
She looked pleased. ‘I’m glad people like them. I never sign them.’
‘Do you know they sell for lots of money?’
She shrugged. ‘That doesn’t concern me. I have a story to tell. I’ve found a way of telling it with cloth and thread. That’s all that matters to me. And if people like my story … well, that’s fine too.’ She paused, smiled. ‘I sometimes think of myself as a one-trick pony,’ she whispered.
I was surprised. She doesn’t seem to care that her dolls are being sold. Could her shrink be doing so on her behalf and not for his own account as Joan, Hannah and Jason believe? If so how many more of their other assumptions are wrong? And why doesn’t she ask how I found out she’s the Ragdoll Artist?
‘We didn’t think you knew your dolls were being sold,’ I said, without explaining who ‘we’ were.
She shook her head. ‘I make them, then give them to Doctor DeJ. He’s told me people like them. I don’t care about that. I only care about them while I’m making them. Afterwards …’ She shrugged again.
I told her that her dolls reminded me of the characters we’d painted on the walls.
‘Yeah, I suppose,’ she said.
I asked her if she remembered how hard we worked on those walls, how passionately involved we were in that project. Then I asked if she ever wondered what had become of our work.
‘No. I try never to think about the past,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘I try to live in the here and now, and carry on with my work.’
I told her our wall paintings were still there, that some people recently discovered them and were very impressed, even calling them a ‘masterpiece.’
‘Here, take a look.’
I brought out my phone, accessed photos of the walls, then pulled her close so we could look at them together. I watched her as she studied them. Immediately, I saw her eyes light up, gleam with recognition. For a few moments she seemed to revel in the memory. Then her eyes glistened and I thought she might start to cry. In a strange way, I was hoping that she would. But then just as quickly her interest flagged.
‘Nice,’ she said, turning away from my phone. ‘But like I said, I only care about the here and now.’
I felt sad as I saw the excitement die out in her eyes.
In the hope of rekindling her interest, I told her I was planning to visit Calista to see them again up close.
‘Would you like to come with me? I think it would be fun to see them together. Do you remember that we almost finished painting them? Do you think we could finish them now? Probably not, because we’re so different. Or … maybe?’
‘I am different,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You go, Pen. Then come back and tell me about it.’
I was stunned into silence. She smiled at me, which I took as her way to show me she hadn’t meant to offend. I had this strange feeling then – that she was with me there, and at the same time not, that in her head she was very much alone.
Suddenly, I started to weep.
‘Now … now …’ she said, comforting me. ‘We’re going to be fine. I believe that.’
Her kind words made me weep even more.
‘I want to introduce you to my friends,’ she said cheerfully, turning to the bar where the other two were waiting. She beckoned them to join us in the booth. After they slipped in beside us: ‘This is my new friend, Johnny. This is my old friend, Pen. And this is Thérèse, my very kind nurse, who takes care of me and helps me get through the days.’
So strange, the way she introduced us, like an unschooled actress awkwardly reciting lines by rote.
The four of us chatted a few minutes. They asked how we met, I told them, and then, perhaps sensing we needed to speak privately again, they excused themselves and retreated back to the bar.
‘So you’re happy at the clinic?’ I asked. She nodded vigorously. ‘Any interest in traveling? You could stay with me in Key West, see it for yourself.’
She shook her head. ‘This is my home – the clinic, the view of the lake. All my art materials are here. And my friends, Johnny and Thérèse.’ She smiled. ‘They call me “Agnès.” I’ve gotten used to that. That’s who I’ve become.’
‘You don’t want to go back to Calista, visit your family?’
‘No,’ she said, resuming the flat tone. I saw moisture in her eyes which told me her lack of affect was a mask. As I gazed at her, I saw her face start to fall. Then she smiled, just as she used to do whenever she felt bad and needed to cheer herself up.
‘Your parents have passed away. Your brothers—’
‘Please!’ she hissed. She uttered the word with such passion, I took it as a signal I must stop mentioning them or Calista, that those were people and a place she could not bear to think about or discuss.
‘Are you really content here?’ I asked again.
‘Very,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine living any place else.’
So, that was that, the end of any possibility she would return, confront her brothers or deal in any way with the issues that had driven her to run away. I wasn’t at all convinced she was as content as she claimed, but there was no one there telling her what to say. Her family had buried her. She was receiving drugs that kept her stabilized and she was a productive artist. Perhaps, I thought, that was the best solution for her. What more did I or anyone else have to offer?
Deciding to drop my questions about her family and her feelings about staying or leaving, I asked her about sewing – how she’d happened to take it up.
‘I don’t remember you ever speaking of textile art,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t even know you knew how to sew.’
‘I didn’t. I learned in OT,’ she said, seemingly happy I’d changed the subject. ‘For a long time I lost my sense of self. I knew that to get it back I needed to start making art again. Drawing, painting, sewing – when I do those things, I become this powerful person. Anyway, I don’t think of my doll-making as sewing. If you need to make art, does it matter what materials you use?’
This reminded me of our intense conversations back at Red Raven and A Caring Place. I was happy our dialogue had turned this way. This was the kind of thing we’d loved to talk about back then – art and wha
t it meant to us.
‘Do you remember Ms Zevin?’ I asked.
‘Of course! Our favorite teacher.’
‘One of the people who saw our wall paintings went to see her. She remembered us both. She said she was always certain you’d become a famous artist.’
Court blushed. ‘Really! Well, you too, I’m sure.’
‘I’m not famous, but I’m pleased with what I make,’ I told her.
She nodded gravely. ‘Isn’t that the only important thing?’
She looked at me then with the straight-on gaze of a person whose life is focused on only one thing, a gaze that conveyed a single-minded vision, or perhaps a successfully channeled form of madness.
We talked on for perhaps another hour, about art and how important it was to our lives. Then Thérèse came over and told us it was time for them to go back to the clinic.
‘We have a motorboat waiting,’ she explained.
We stood, embraced again. She said how happy she was to see me after so many years and how greatly she appreciated my visit.
‘I hope you’ll come again, Pen. Next time, come to the clinic and I’ll show you what I’m working on. I have paints. We can work side by side. Wouldn’t that be fun!’
I walked them to the door. Court and Thérèse slipped out, while Johnny lingered.
‘How’d it go?’ he whispered.
‘Don’t know,’ I told him. ‘She made it clear she’s happy and settled here, and has no desire to leave, even for a visit.’
‘I suspected as much,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe she’ll ever leave.’
‘And you?’
‘I hope to soon. I’ll miss her when I do. Maybe I’ll come visit you in Key West. I hear it’s a great place for guys like me.’
I told him that if he came, I’d be happy to show him around and he could even stay with me if he liked. Then he too was gone. I watched him run to catch up with them, then the three as they moved down the street toward the docks.
Thinking back on the two hours I spent with Court, I have trouble reconciling the girl I’d known and the mature woman I met again. She was the same, and yet very different, more closed-off, more self-contained – perhaps less tormented, too. She seemed to have found a way of living that suited her, and the fact that her life was so closely circumscribed didn’t seem to faze her. She was free to express what she felt about people, to create, make art out of her belief that human beings are duplicitous. She could express that again and again, as if always circling a controlling belief held deep within, trying over and over to create an ultimate expression of it, and yet always failing because her goal was by its nature unreachable, her conflicts unresolvable.
The Murals Page 23