The Angry Woman Suite

by Lee Fullbright

  I turned, in the process nearly tripping over Sahar’s wheelchair. Her face was devoid of color.

  Matthew said, “There’s one more, just finished.” His expression was as grim as Sahar’s. “In the back.”

  Baffled by this new, strained undercurrent between Sahar and Matthew, I was nonetheless curious about this other portrait, and I quickly followed Matthew, taking note of everything in the spacious, cluttered studio—the way the light played up into the room’s highest corners, and one wall especially, which displayed sketches of Matthew’s earlier works: studies of barns, a pot of geraniums, sheets drying in the sun. Other walls were lined with bins of oils representative of Matthew’s more recent endeavors: abstracts that were percussions of color, form, and subliminal message. And then, at the back of the room, nearly obscured by a cot and a smoking chair, on an easel, was the last portrait of Magdalene. I gasped when I saw it, and behind me heard Lear mutter, “Mad, mad, mad.”

  “That’s it,” Matthew pronounced. “Exactly what I’m calling these pictures: The Angry Woman Suite.”

  “But, really, Magdalene doesn’t look so angry now!” I protested. And it was true. In this last portrait of Magdalene there was more resoluteness than fury, more composure than frenzy, more light than dark. It was still a breathtaking, tightly compacted beauty Magdalene had, with a bit of highly-charged ends, but there was now a calmness to the set of her mouth; a yielding in the blue-gray steel of her eyes, a subtle wavering to shoulders draped with a material matching those pale eyes. I moved in closer, absorbing the painting’s detail, noticing that the backdrop was very cleverly done, nearly unobtrusive, of a river in the far distance. The river curved around Magdalene’s head like a halo. But farther back, and I had to look closer to even make it out, was the figure of a boy. Or maybe it was a man. It was hard to say, the way he’d been blended into the backdrop as if he were a trick of the light.

  This last painting more than conveyed the secret of Magdalene’s allure, that mix of vulnerability and otherworldliness. And that’s when I was struck by the truth of what had been going on. Matthew had stripped Magdalene naked for the whole world to see what I’d seen first: a victor. A one-of-a-kind who rises up to meet upheavals, expecting them, realizing that life without injustice is eminently useless.

  So the whole world could see what belonged to me.

  The pictures felt suddenly indecent—and the studio suffocating. But I nonetheless stood rooted to the spot, held fast by indecision.

  “They’re exquisite,” I heard Sahar say. Her voice was tight. I turned then, remembering I’d left her at the front of the studio. Magdalene had wheeled her back. My eyes traveled between the faces of these two women that I loved, and I was hard put choosing whose face was the palest.

  Or which was the most frightening: the fear in Sahar’s eyes or the fear in Magdalene’s.

  I didn’t think further.

  “Exquisite, indeed!” I agreed heartily, taking the wheelchair from Magdalene and turning Sahar away from the painting. A part of me registered the falsity of my tone, but a bigger part of me was intent on separating Sahar and Magdalene; of keeping them apart from a pain greater than my own. To put it bluntly, I was aiming to avert a calamity I’d yet to fully comprehend.

  And then, amazingly, another part of my brain recognized how ironic it was that a man with the reputation as the least sensitive, who ostensibly couldn’t see past the nose on his face, was looking at the cruel and tragic hand Matthew had wielded and seeing it for what it was. For I sincerely believed, then, that Matthew had seduced Magdalene. How else could he have painted her so well? All that anger in those first paintings, and then later, in the last, what looked to be a sort of philosophical acquiescence, even … contentment on her part?

  Matthew had gotten to know Magdalene. Too well. And she’d enjoyed the process.

  And I understood more. The first round of paintings had been meant to depict a collective anger: It was Matthew and Magdalene’s anger at the injustice that they couldn’t be together. Because Sahar was in their way.

  And now Sahar knew it.

  I suppose Matthew and Magdalene thought, if they thought at all, that this was an oblique and therefore less painful way of cluing us in. It was certainly honest cheating, I’ll give it that, if there is such a thing. There were no lies and nobody fell down a flight of stairs, like what happened to Sahar before. No, this time there was only innuendo. Sick, irrefutable innuendo.

  And of course I was crushed. And livid. Matthew Waterston had been my hero. And Magdalene was my heart. But my heart was now broken, and the only thing larger than my hero’s icon status was his hypocrisy. He was flawed, nothing like he seemed—and I couldn’t help wondering, as Magdalene had once wondered, are any of us as we seem?

  But almost worse, I realized Magdalene could never be the kind of woman who’d need me the way Sahar needed me.

  I turned and bolted from the studio, running square into Jamie. I’d completely forgotten about him. But the look he gave me is stamped on my memory. It’s fleeting, this look, and at the time I perceived it as regret. And concern. For me and his mother, and that dark cloud of unspoken conflict swirling around inside his father’s studio. Of course I understand now, because one only understands life looking backwards—plus I’ve replayed the scene in my head innumerable times since—that Jamie’s expression was one of abject longing.

  But that in no way whatsoever was that longing directed at me or either of his parents.

  It kills me to have to say it, but I never spoke with Matthew Waterston again.

  In fact, much stayed unspoken. And if not for Jamie, all would’ve stayed unspoken—and even after Jamie elected to go to a music school in New York, I still didn’t tell Sahar of the things Jamie said to me.

  “It’s not what you think,” Jamie had insisted the day before leaving for school. “My father’s not in love or lust with Magdalene—he’s not sleeping with her. Those are ideas you’ve manufactured in your own head, Aidan, spun from paranoia. Look, you have to stop punishing my dad. You have to start talking to him again. He’s suffering, Aidan.”

  Of course Jamie knew nothing of the adult world—or so I thought. He was young, unseasoned.

  I busied myself hanging swords for a new exhibit, for the museum. Not bothering turning around, I retorted, “You don’t know what I think.”

  “Everyone knows what you think. Aidan, do you mind? Would you mind looking at me? You know what I think? I think you don’t want to have to deal with the real truth here. The truth about my mother.”

  I kept my back to him.

  “My father’s been trying to warn you about my mother, Aidan.”

  I froze.

  “And his warning is in those Angry Woman paintings. In fact, those paintings are the warning. Jesus, Aidan, I’ve got to believe that on some level you know this already, but you can’t stay with it because my mother’s got you feeling like you’re her … deliverer or something, which, for a reason that would escape any sane-minded person, you love.”

  I allowed a quick glance over my shoulder. Looking down, hands in pockets, where I knew his long, sensitive fingers were digging into his palms, Jamie didn’t see my swift survey of thick, dark hair, insolent slouch, or enviable height and broad shoulders. I’d watched him grow from boyhood to manhood, charting each stage, but when had he become so certain of everything based on nothing?

  “There was never room enough for me,” he murmured. His voice went stronger: “I got used to that idea a long time ago, Aidan. Not to say they don’t love me. It’s just that they love what they do to each other more than they’ve ever loved me.”

  He’d hooked me and he knew it. He moved up alongside me.

  “Those Angry Woman paintings have nothing to do with Magdalene, and everything to do with my parents.”

  Not the paintings I’d seen.

  “The suite is symbolic, Aidan. Which my mother understood. Just as my father meant her to. All that darkness and an
ger, you bet she understood it. Which is why she looked about to throw up.”

  I managed to keep most of the scorn from my voice: “What are you talking about?”

  “Try this one on. My mother’s not in that wheelchair because of polio—”

  “I’ve heard as much.”

  “Which is something only my father could’ve told you, because Mother can never tell the truth. Did he also tell you Mother threw herself down a flight of stairs? After begging him to push her? After daring him? After taking his hands and placing them on her shoulders and taking that first step backwards, facilitating …?”

  I felt suddenly lightheaded.

  “No, I didn’t see my mother fall, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wasn’t there. But I saw and heard plenty before the fall, and plenty after, too. Especially at the trial.”

  Matthew had never mentioned a trial.

  Jamie’s lip curled. “No, I wasn’t at the trial, either. Still too young. But everyone was talking about it. So of course I knew Mother insisted it was the girlfriend who’d pushed her down the stairs, breaking her back. And even though my father testified he was the one who’d inadvertently caused Mother to lose her balance—just like him, trying to save everybody’s skins—the jury convicted my father’s girlfriend. Sent her to prison.” Jamie’s words were clipped: “I heard my mother laughed when the verdict was read.”

  “Jamie, people are sometimes misunderstood—”

  “She’s a monster,” Jamie said baldly.

  I blanched. “Beg your pardon?”

  “My mother’s a monster. She’s always been a monster.”

  “Listen, I don’t think—”

  “No, you listen. Here’s how sick it all is, Aidan. Despite how it may seem, my parents are perfect partners for each other. My mother’s beautiful and empty, and my father’s drawn to her beauty—but he hates her emptiness. But get this: her worst inspires his best.

  “His hatred for her does make for interesting paintings, don’t you agree? He’s always had this instinctual obsession for people with substance. Which is why he keeps trying to fill Mother up, to meet that obsession. Impossible, of course, because Mother can’t be filled up. She’s a sieve—it’s her fatal flaw. And that’s what drives my father nuts: that he keeps trying to fill her up anyway. That’s his fatal flaw. But once Dad gets nuts, he acts out the only way he knows how. He makes paintings exposing her, and expressing his frustration with himself. Aidan, have you known my father to paint anything as dark as the Angry Women?”

  “No—”

  “Ah, but he has. But the Angry Women, those are the only ones he’ll take public. Look, Aidan, think back to when Dad started coming to Chadds Ford. The first time was right after the trial, because he had to get away from Mother. And he kept coming back summer after summer, though later his coming back became directly tied to you. Oh, come on, don’t look so surprised. Didn’t you ever wonder why my father left me and my mother home in Maine while he trotted off to Chadds Ford every year?

  “Sure, my father had already started renovating the mill house when he met you, but he could’ve dumped it. He’s dumped lots of projects.” Jamie paused. “My father admires your substance, Aidan. Your sense of responsibility and that stubborn mule-ass tenacity of yours. Maybe because it hasn’t crossed over to obsession yet, like what’s happened for him. You know, I’ve always believed my father finally brought me and Mother here to Chadds Ford to live because, well, because I think he feels you’re the last great hope, Aidan.”

  My confusion thickened. “For?”

  “Honesty,” Jamie said simply. “Dad believes you’ve got this huge capacity for truth—but his Angry Women are sending you a warning: Watch your back with Sahar Witherspoon Waterston.”

  “I can’t believe—”

  “Mother knows when my dad starts pulling back,” Jamie argued. “She even knows he pulls away because he’s trying to save himself from her. That’s what makes her desperate. What you see in some of my father’s other works—his music pieces, for example? You see a connection he was looking for with me and a solace he found, and that made Mother crazy because he found the solace without her. Just as it makes her crazy that he paints her darkness. Their darkness. The bottom line is that they’re adept at driving each other insane.”

  “But back to the fall,” I mumbled.

  “Oh, so now you want to talk about it? Well, apparently my father had started pulling back more than usual. And so Mother pulled off the stupidest stunt of all time, making it so he could never leave her—which he never would’ve anyway, despite other women, because what if? What if my father weren’t able to paint without his muse?

  “I know, it’s sick, isn’t it? He can’t leave her because he thinks he can’t paint without her craziness to inspire him. But she did do it,” Jamie insisted. “My mother did throw herself down a staircase, and then blamed everyone else on the planet for what she did—but she’ll never admit to it. Just as my father will never stop trying to make her come clean, or warning others to steer clear of her. Hence, the Angry Woman pictures. And that, my dear Aidan, is the whole story of how wrong you are about Magdalene and my father.”

  “But you forgot two things,” I said hoarsely.

  “What?”

  “Lear Grayson. Your father refused to show me the completed suite until Lear was home from France. So answer me this: what do Lear Grayson and this so-called warning about your mother have in common?”

  Jamie’s eyes glittered. “Don’t have a clue. Only my dad knows the connection to Lear Grayson.”

  “No, Magdalene knows it, too. Your father told me it was Magdalene who didn’t want anyone seeing the paintings until her father got home.”

  “News to me. Do the paintings contain a warning about Lear too, then? Hell, I don’t know. What I can believe is that the suite has many fronts—lots of things in life serve more than one purpose. This suite is intended to salvage Grayson Investments, that’s its original front. And if my father does succeed in saving Grayson Investments with the Angry Women, we all benefit, because without Grayson this valley takes a hit, because we’re all invested in Festival now. Hotels, restaurants, crafts, food, livestock, history, the music, art, you name it, we all get a boost from Festival.” Jamie took a deep breath. “And your second point?”

  “That last painting …”

  “It is different from the others,” Jamie conceded. “It’s much more Magdalene than the others. I can’t answer to it. All I know is you’re giving my mother too much credit, and my father not enough. And I’m asking—no, I’m begging you, Aidan, please talk to my father. I’m begging you to put your idiotic, misplaced pride away and square things before it’s too late.”

  I squared nothing. Cursory examination of Jamie’s extraordinary charge against Sahar proved too intricate, taking me too close to the uncomfortable notion that I desired only the unattainable: other men’s wives, their children, their best friends. So I packed Jamie’s warning up with his disdain—and it was a long time before I looked at either again.

  Sahar enabled my isolationism by not inviting me to say goodbye to Matthew when he and Magdalene left for New York on tour, and by never questioning my silence. Nor, so far as I knew, did she even question why Matthew stayed away so long with The Angry Woman Suite, although I was aware she read the Philadelphia and New York papers too, and so she had to be aware of the veiled inferences being made about the beautiful model “helping” make Matthew’s introduction of the suite the phenomenon it turned out to be. The papers said Magdalene was “elusive,” but I could read between the lines. I could read she was the toast of New York. I could read that Matthew and Magdalene had turned their backs on us Brandywine people.

  And that was how my isolationism, stoked by Sahar, and carefully tended by myself, grew. Until it became a mighty living, breathing thing, defining me.

  So, really, what was there to talk about?

  Nor did Lear say anything to me about Matthew and Magdal
ene after they left. He joined Sahar and me in going about life as though nothing were amiss—and I understood Matthew and Magdalene turned in equally good performances themselves, returning to Chadds Ford for our first festival following the war as if nothing had happened between any of us.

  Matthew, I heard, made an appearance at the historical society while Magdalene, with Earl, checked into an East Chester hotel, where, Lear told me this much, Magdalene presented him with an incredible sum of money: the take on all but the last of the Angry Woman paintings. And so it was done. With the Angry Women, Matthew cemented his legacy as America’s foremost artist and put Grayson Investments back in the black.

  He’d saved the Graysons from themselves.

  I led the festival parade down Broad Street and oversaw the dance afterwards, and although I stayed on the lookout for Magdalene, I didn’t see her or Matthew at Festival that year, or the year after, or the following year either. I later heard that Magdalene and Earl had settled in New York City, and although I was aware Matthew continued going back and forth between the mill house and the city often enough to keep talk to a minimum, I was not invited over when he was in residence, nor did Sahar talk about him when he returned to New York.

  Years passed and Lothian Grayson graduated from my schoolroom, retreating to Grayson House to wait for Jamie to make his mark on the music world and return for her. And for his part Jamie wrote often enough, considerate for one who’d had it up to his eyeballs with my “mule-ass tenacity.”

  Although his letters were superficial in the beginning, I gleaned knowledge of Jamie’s frequent contacts with Matthew and, as time went on, I also knew of Jamie’s first band and of his first composition—“Dazed”—and when he took “Witherspoon” for his professional name, so as not to capitalize on his father’s fame. I was also one of the first to learn of Jamie’s breakthrough series of broadcasts over WWJ in Detroit, and I have to say this: the fissures that defined my heart were almost bridged when Jamie’s broadcasts proved highly successful at bringing him to the ears of a wider audience, when he started bringing my old dreams of traveling with a dance band to life, commencing with the collegiate circuit. And then, with his memorable engagement at the Metropolitan, my letter back to Jamie told of my own first broadcast in 1923, over the old Wanamaker station in Philadelphia, for the Boy Scouts of Delaware County.