Dead Artist

by Ivan Jenson

  “We pulled you out of school Milo because you were special, you were an artist.”

  Ray joined in Milo’s complaint: “Look what being an artist did to Milo. When the streets of New York finally spit him out, he had nothing to fall back on. He had to come here with his tail between his legs. He's uneducated, but at least he has the dignity to live on his own, even if it is in a real dump of a hotel.” Ray was smiling. “I do salute you for that Milo, But look at you. In the end you are still living in a hundred square foot box, except it is not in Manhattan, it is in nowhere, Michigan.”

  “This isn't the end. And, I won’t be living that way for long. In the fall my art is going to auction, and things are going to change.”

  “At least you hope so,” Ray teased.

  “No Ray, I know so.” Milo straightened his posture, puffed out his chest with pride and stared straight into Ray's eyes.

  “All right, all right, enough,” Becky said. “We are all just speculating. Why don’t we all stop living in the past and in the future and let's start living in the present, in the here and now. Look at the sky outside, the way the moonlight shines on the tree.”

  The four of them glanced out the kitchen window and indeed the moon was illuminating a thick, giant, slingshot shaped, spread-legged tree. Ray sneered. “That actually looks like some of Uncle Allen's tree erotica. Doesn't it? Doesn’t it look like that bitch tree wants it bad?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The erotic tree sculptor himself and his wife arrived the very next morning. Uncle Allen had long white hair, a white beard and a finely etched face that made him look like a weathered Kris Kristofferson. His skin was dark from exposure to the New Mexico sun. He looked like a carved totem pole Indian that one sees in a cigar shop. He eagerly hugged Milo. With Uncle Allen came cousin Edna, her husband, the Santa Fe realtor and their two children who were clearly perplexed by the concept of the wedding slash funeral combo. Perhaps they were spooked by the prospect of the ceremony taking place in a cemetery. Children do not need spoon fed explanations. They just need to experience the moment like an adult and decide for themselves what to think.

  They had arrived on a morning flight, and the ceremony was that very afternoon. Nobody was going to take any chances and waste time. Sonia Sonas was going fast and it was to be the biggest, strangest party that this family had ever thrown. The fact of Milo getting married in itself was a miracle. Added to that, was the weirdness of Mrs. Sonas attending her own funeral.

  Samantha's father had decided to fly in at the last moment. He was a solemn, short man of few words. He looked roughly the same age as Milo, which made them both uncomfortable. Carly, the girlfriend that Samantha wanted to set Vincent up with finally showed up at the bus station and took a taxi to the house. She was a mean spirited girl of Polish descent, built low to the ground, but with a strong gymnast's body. She chain-smoked and was prematurely bitter for her age of twenty three, complete with her furrowed brow. But she also was very sexy, in that “mean girl” way.

  Carly was pissed off that the hitch hiking didn't pan out and that she had been coerced into such a long bus trip. She and Vincent met for coffee, but Pablo showed up too. His coal black eyes captivated her. He said nothing more to Carly but, “You have cigarettes, you have brown eyes, both things that I love in a woman.”

  She broke a smile at his flippant comment. Her response to Pablo visibly hurt Vincent since it had been the first time that this new visitor, intended for Vincent, smiled. And then Pablo added insult to injury when he said something unnecessarily cruel, “Vincent, why do you have that expression on your face, like your mother just died?”

  The statement brought Milo down. Samantha took his hand and assured him, “He’s just being an ass. Your mother is still here, yes, she’s still with us, still here to share this special day. Just don’t listen to him, he’s being mean spirited. He is a mean spirit after all, and though he is known the world over, his renown can never bring him back to life, and he knows it.”

  “May I talk to you for a minute?” Milo said to Pablo.

  The two of them had a talk outside while Vincent and Samantha and Carly looked on, but couldn’t hear the words. The two girls watched through the glass window, as Milo’s mouth moved and Picasso gestured back. Milo was telling Pablo to just cool it, this was Vincent's moment. “Look Samantha managed to get her friend to come all the way out here to make sure that Vincent could have a little fun.”

  “But what is the use in all of this?” Pablo said, striking a match to yet another cigarette and blowing the smoke into Milo's face. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that it’s no use, we cannot consummate. He won’t be able to feel a thing. Not her touch, not her kiss, nada, and if she were to reach for him to even stroke his arm, he would feel nothing. It’s too late for us now, we are nothing but dead artists. You should be more concerned with yourself. Listen to me closely Milo. I am not sure how to put this except to say that now that there is a possibility of things happening for you, of you being a real famous artist just as I was, you have to make sure to feel everything, as you go through with it, try to remember everything, every sensation. You have one more new beginning in your life, one more half of life, don’t blow it by moving through it too quickly or too blindly.”

  “Okay, Pablo. I hear you. Now let's go inside, but please be nicer to Vincent.”

  The Sonas family had always known how to throw a good party. There was a time when that was all they did. During Milo’s childhood, the crazed “weekend get-togethers” of his mother’s extended Latin family were extremely distracting to Milo and also proved most detrimental to his early formal education. And this was before his so-called home schooling. How can a child focus on academia when on a Friday night the family’s pet chimpanzee swung from the curtains to the living room chandelier or landed on the Formica table eating ravishingly from the arroz con pollo? How could he focus on algebra on a Monday morning with memories of a weekend in which it was okay for the kids to have shots of tequila administered to them by Uncle Allen? What about the way that they joked about the possibility of an apocalypse during the cold war years? When it seemed the big bomb would end it all? How can a kid concentrate on anything but anarchy when the end of the world could come at any given moment? What about the hootenannies where their hippie friends sang songs to protest the war in Vietnam, or songs in favor of the pill, like the song that Uncle Allen sang while strumming a six string: I’m not fucking worried about fucking anymore cause my girl got that little pink pill from the Pharmacy store.

  And the other song he hollered in his speak song fashion: I want to be alive to see my funeral day, I won’t want to miss all the cryin, no there’s no way, so while I’m still six feet above, throw me a party so I can feel the love, yeah while I’m still alive and kicking. I want to feel the love...

  That song was a-strummin' and a-hollorin' through Milo’s head all day long. And he realized that the memory of that song was the root of his concept to create this double bill wedding and funeral.

  Milo had been written off as un-marriagable just like his cousin Little Glen because he was forty five and still living in the house where his mother had died. Little Glen was a fellow aging bachelor, and he hadn’t swept, mopped, cleaned, dusted or organized that ranch style home, near the freeway in Los Angeles in twenty years. Somehow it seemed those that were born in the Kodachrome and Technicolor sixties couldn’t get it together and couldn't get it on with women now in the information age.

  For Milo it was all pretty simple, he just couldn’t afford to get married. Sure, girls of a certain age (those under twenty two) would find it novel and fun to sleep with him a couple of times in his East Village cave during his lucky street selling days. But then, when the sales would run dry (it happened to even the best most diehard street artists) the girls would find it incomprehensible that he would not whip out the “help wanted” ads and find himself some steady work. But no, Milo would keep hitting the streets during hard time
s, even during the subzero dregs of February. Why? Well, because a street artist never knows when they might run into a high roller. Those were the “catches” who might come to his studio and purchase the big canvases for big money or commission him to create something for them, paying half up front and the other half upon completion. But sometimes they never came and he’d hit rock bottom living off the collection of coins that had built up in a jar. He would take that jar to the CoinStar machines at the supermarket and get a voucher for cash. Once he cashed in one hundred and ten dollars in coins and he took his girlfriend to Little Italy and they spent it all in one night. In those frugal days and nights it never even occurred to him to go to the grocery store and stock up, nor did it occur to him to invest in a simple hot plate and cook for himself and his women.

  Samantha had told her father Milo’s stories of hardship and he had such an unfavorable opinion of Milo that he refused to condone or to fund the ceremony beyond the discounted catering. The only reason he flew out was because he had heard about the financial hope on Milo’s horizon. Nick picked up the slack and paid for everything Carte Blanche. The main costs were a tent for the wedding, reserving a grave sight at the Kalamazoo cemetery and quickly arranging for a freshly dug grave and a limestone grave stone carved with the words: Sonia Sonas lies here, the beloved mother of Ray, Paul, Luna, Amelia, Becky and Milo. She has watched over them like a spirit guide and an angel.

  Milo felt that the phraseology and the whole spirit guide business was directed solely at him.

  After all, he was the one who brought her the most worry. He was the one she loomed over the longest. His was the studio she cleaned and organized. She had been there for him after his big bang nervous breakdown, even administering him an enema when he had cried out one night in paranoia, stammering that “they have sewn my asshole shut, they want me dead.” He had become convinced that the government wanted him to die from the inability to shit. That they thought he was loitering on earth because he was one of those lazy coffee shop casualties who wandered the earth in the afternoons. Because he didn’t contribute to the monetary system...that they want to kill him so that he could be another god-damned dead artist!

  All that was over with now, thank god and it was wonderful and bright outside. It was a particularly humid, muggy afternoon and his cousin Little Glen stood in his new shiny suit appearing both sinister and cute. A scattering of Nick’s friends flew in, they stood out from the crowd in that they looked current, up-to-the-minute and trendy like they belonged in Cannes or Monaco or New York. And then there was Milo's mother, wheel chair bound again, but looking radiant in a stark red dress. Samantha who had dyed her Goodwill wedding dress black for this day of duality was wondering after seeing Mrs. Sonas’s red dress if she shouldn't have just left the wedding dress white after all.

  Uncle Allen was joined by a minister, Dan Boswick, who was chosen by Luna (and therefore was well versed in alternative ceremonies). He stood among the gravestones, metal folding chairs and the make shift wooden trellis decked out with roses, and managed an expression that was both somber (for the funeral) and delighted (for the wedding). Samantha mostly hung around her single bridesmaid Carly, who dressed in Gothic chic. She looked lovely and devilish, as if she had stepped out of an Anne Rice novel.

  Milo had wanted Samantha to wear red this day, but she refused, she didn’t want to look like a woman of ill repute from a bad western.

  It is always advisable to marry young, so that those in attendance do not resemble bingo players or losers from a thirty year high school reunion. All together a smattering of about fifty people showed up, mostly middle aged and above. Samantha and Carly who both wore reef flowers in their hair gave the ceremony a much needed injection of youth. Samantha and her friend supplied the hope. Milo and his family supplied the gloom. Becky and Amelia’s friends seemed appropriately and understandably bewitched as to whether they should be bereaving and weeping, or well wishing with tears of joy running down their cheeks. Then over a makeshift sound system came the Carpenters' song, We’ve Only Just Begun. This blatantly sentimental song offered a young Milo the false promise of what love might feel like. But Milo was never able to achieve the emotion created by this sappy masterpiece. When the song concluded and Milo and Samantha had finished walking around the grave, the minister with his braided hair and beard began his oratory: “We are here, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, to celebrate the life and death of Sonia Sonas, as well as to share in the union of her son Milo with Samantha. Two disparate events it seems, but perhaps not at all. There are, I believe three hallmarks of life's journey, birth, marriage and death. And we have two of them embodied here. We have Mrs. Sonas who admittedly is in the last days of her life...”

  “Last day, not days!” Mrs. Sonas managed to yell out. “I ain’t gonna last days, believe you me.”

  There was a smattering of laughter and the minister continued the proceedings as planned. “Okay, as we celebrate the last day of Mrs. Sonia Sonas, we also come together to witness the marriage of her youngest son Milo to Samantha Tristan. Mrs. Sonia Sonas has expressed the desire to share these last moments with those who are nearest and dearest. In so many funerals those who are gone, do not get to share in the bereavement of their death. But with Mrs. Sonas we are honored to be able to have her have that rare, almost unheard of chance this summer afternoon. And now some words from Luna Sonas.”

  Luna stepped up to the microphone and told her mother that she loved her, and thanked her for always coming over and cleaning her house. And that was all she said, because she began to cry, but then her cry turned into laughter as she said, “This is such a schizophrenic day.”

  Next, Becky's speech went as follows, “When I was a child, I saw my sister Luna’s commercials on the TV set, commercials for soap, they were my earliest education in advertising. I have always wished to be more than just an ad girl and to make a film of my own but it turns out after five years of trying that I have to accept who and what I am. I am Becky Sonas and I am in advertising. I am a corporate tool, a hack. But there is a happy ending here because in a way I have now come full circle, I have been asked to work for the same Love Soap brand that Luna was a spokeschild for all those years ago. Now, when I got this account I was completely blocked as to how I would approach the thirty second spot, and then it hit me, I would ask Luna to be featured in the ad. It is obvious when we look at Luna and at my mother as well, that they still both share the most wonderful skin. And Luna was kind enough to say “yes”. Okay so I won’t be directing the remake of Citizen Kane any time soon, but mother, I wanted to share the news with you, because it will be a chance for Luna and me to work together again. As for Milo’s wedding, well I am sure you have all noticed the one man crew with a video camera in his hand, well that is my gift to Milo. This wedding-funeral will be captured in high definition video so that Samantha and Milo can treasure this moment forever and the world can watch it on YouTube.”

  It was then that Milo noticed this inconspicuous cameraman with a mini-cam in his palm, so small it could have been a cell phone.

  “This is my friend Brian,” Becky said, “and he is great at capturing real moments. He has the most amazing ability to make himself invisible, and so please everyone, continue to be yourselves. No need to mug for the camera. Okay?”

  Mother was beginning to tear up.

  Ray declined to share his feelings about mother, he was more focused on taking swigs from his white wine spritzer.

  The minister took center stage again and cued Uncle Allen. He called Milo and Samantha to stand before him. “We are also gathered here today, to join in matrimony Milo Sonas, and Samantha Bella Tristan as well as honor the life of my sister Sonia Sonas.” And he said, “if anybody has anything to say against it, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  Brian the cameraman panned the crowd with that tiny secret agent styled lens.

  Milo and Samantha faced the crowd and nobody spoke. Uncle Allen smiled, then said,
“I now pronounce you husband and...”

  “IT'S A FUCKING JOKE! That’s what this whole thing is!” A voice heckled out these words and all heads turned to discover that it was coming from a very drunk Ray, who now had a silver flask of vodka in his hand. He was himself again, and began his destructive reign of terror. “My dear little brother Milo, always wanting, needing, craving attention. God forbid that at the end of her life Mother should have a moment in the sun all to herself. No, it also has to be a moment that is all about you, and your stupid little union.”

  “Please don’t do this now Ray.” Mrs. Sonas said, but her voice was gurgling, full of phlegm, and had no volume or power. In fact the only person that heard her utterance was the ever so timid Consuelo, and there was nothing she could do about it, considering she had barely understood what was taking place that afternoon. The only thing she knew for sure was that Ray was drunk. She knew drunk when she saw it. Her ex-husband destroyed their marriage when she was nineteen all in just a few months with alcohol abuse.

  Ray continued, spittle coming from his mouth, “He thinks he is so damn special, who the fuck does he think he is, Pablo Picasso or Vincent Van Gogh?”

  This statement made Pablo and Vincent stiffen their posture. Pablo in particular looked like he was ready to retaliate. He mumbled to himself, “Bastardo!”

  “This guy,” Ray said pointing rudely at Milo “never even accepted our father. No, ever since I can remember he was always telling anybody that would listen that Picasso was his real father, and Van Gogh was his godfather. Milo is living a dream, a dream put into his head by that fool called Nick, who got all his money from an old man he wasn’t even related to. Now Milo thinks he can “de-value” our mother by upstaging her last rites by marrying one of his little coed girlfriends. Samantha, you stupid bitch. You don't even understand why he is so hot on you? It’s because you are a university girl. See my kid brother got short changed out of a higher education and he has developed this fetish for any girl that holds text books against her breasts. That, and in addition to the fact that he is a pedophile.”