The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

by Cherise Wolas

  One young man will respond to her Wanted ad. He is Theo Tesh Park, a name he has assumed, but why he needed a new name, or what he was named at birth, is unclear. Also unclear is whether he’s tall or short, broad or stringy, handsome or plain.

  When the heavy steel door to Paloma’s loft swings open, his jaw will drop when, in the middle distance of the huge place, he sees stone and wood behemoths: A black stone goddess fresh from the earth. A single form rising from a narrow point at its base, turning into a shield for a giant. Two incredibly long and slender figures in white stone, nearly entwined, neither with any obvious human features, but encased in love. Pale-pink wood carved into a sculpture of multiple spirals, the insides painted a shocking red instantly making Theo Tesh Park think of blood, of life and of death.

  A mellifluous, husky, accent-tinged voice will bring Theo down to earth. “I am Paloma Rosen,” she will say, and Theo’s spine will shiver when he looks down at the tiny, beautiful old woman patiently waiting for his attention.

  “You’re an artist,” he will say.

  His statement will recommend him, and Paloma will hire him, and Theo will prove himself trustworthy and competent, timely with the tasks Paloma assigns him.

  One morning, months into their arrangement, Paloma flicks on the switch in her salle de bain and looks upon herself with fright, and remorse. Her long white braids have unspooled in sleep, her eyes bloodshot, the blue of her pupils bled down to some desiccated shade, her cheekbones cut into the skin, sharp as blades, mouth gummy and dry. At this ripened age, she knows better: two of her rye sours, or gin and tonics, every other night, after a good day’s work. Once she could drink with the best of them, but no longer, not in years, but Theo was home last night, and exactly how many of those devastating drinks did they imbibe? She feels how she will suffer all of this day.

  Suddenly, she will look away from her hands in the mirror plaiting the long, long platinum braids, braids she wore even when her hair was chocolate brown, the straight middle part to the nape, the gathered thickness divided in half, each half divided into thirds, then twined together and tied off with silver bands, plaits that reach her waist, and she will catch her own eyes.

  She will know this headache of hers is not a bland hangover, that there was wildness last night, tamed wildness, of course, but she remembers Theo telling her about a drug-addled mother, a dead grandmother, a sister in the Mojave with other like-minded young people, thinking themselves old-fashioned hippies rather than failures. Or is that how Paloma interpreted what Theo told her last night, and he said he thought his sister was in a cult, or in something that seemed like a cult? Paloma might need clarification about that.

  And Paloma will know she must have been cross-eyed drunk because she elicits others’ stories while remaining private, and yet she must have told Theo a few of her own because Jean-Pierre Beson is in her head and, until this moment, she can’t recall the last time she thought of that once and long-ago husband, of her former life, ancient now, in Paris.

  Though the specifics are unclear, she will remember last night as one of revelations, timid at first, and although the air never cooled down, she is fairly certain she and Theo lit dozens of candles, and then their secrets were flying through all that beautiful flickering candlelight, whisked out of their mouths on the hot breeze that flowed in through the open windows.

  There must have been an ungodly number of drinks because she will remember Theo pulling down a glass pitcher from the top shelf of a kitchen cabinet, and then he had armfuls of lemons and limes and blood oranges, taken from the large basket on the ten-foot-long marble island she herself hammered from an even larger piece, then chiseled, sanded, and polished, back in 1967, when she was twenty-nine and in her first full year in New York, living in the loft, owning the otherwise vacant building. Theo was slicing all that fruit, his big hands squeezing citrus halves in one tight squeeze, when she would have had to cut each into eighths to wring juice from the fruit. And she will remember pouring the dregs of rye from the dead bottle into the pitcher, then opening a fresh one and pouring forever, a stream of amber that went on and on, and the seltzer had sizzled, and the cubes had tinkled against the glass until the pitcher was brimming, and she will say, “Marcel Duchamp gave me this pitcher,” bragging as she never did, and Theo will say, “Who’s that?”

  And there will be a song still on a loop in Paloma’s head, the song Theo is embarrassed that he loves because it is played on the radio and Theo will not abide music played on the radio. A girl with a huge soaring voice singing The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out … And in the dark, I can hear your heartbeat … and Paloma will remember the singer’s strange name—Florence and the Machine—and she will remember clapping her hands and yelling over the singer’s voice, telling Theo to play the song again. And he had been like a puppy dog with a yummy bone clamped in his jaw, grinning his innocent grin, that precocious spirit of his making her laugh, both of them singing along. Theo’s voice unexpectedly fine, knowing every word that trilled and thrilled. All Paloma could do was grab hold, here and there, of the words she recalled, acutely aware that the orchestral music and the starbursting voice of the singer were at odds with lyrics about a tumultuous love affair that blinded the singer, left her screaming aloud, until she found her lover’s heartbeat, and knew she would stay in the darkness with him, or her, or whoever you was.

  Later, when Paloma is downstairs in her studio, assessing the eight-foot hunk of soft butternut wood she plans to begin carving, Theo will sneak down the staircase, sit silently on a step, and she will be aware of him, wonder how long to give him to marshal the courage to say whatever he has come to say, to reveal the artifact she is aware she has forgotten in the hazy murk of rye and juices and seltzer and sugar.

  Her relationship with Theo will fascinate her, but she will not have expected to feel this sense of commitment to him, and while it has taken her some time to adjust, the notion of caring for another in a pure way will not be, as she used to fear, awful. Until Theo, no one’s needs or desires or expectations ever altered Paloma’s intentions for her own life, or never for more than a few brief weeks or months, times consumed by lovers. It is not sexual attraction she feels for Theo, although he is a most beautiful specimen, and it is not romantic love, they are ages and worlds apart, but getting drunk together last night will be an indication of how they might speak to each other in the future, about the real things that propel them.

  But right now, what she understands is that the love she feels for him is deep and protective, and wonders if this is this why the untouched butternut wood before her seems to hold two figures, one larger, revealing itself, one smaller, still shy. Although Theo is the tall one and she the small, the great maternal figure in the butternut speaks to her first.

  Paloma does not pray, or not in some usual way, she is a Jew from Cairo, long divorced from a practicing French Catholic husband, and yet she will whisper words of hope, that the love she feels for Theo is not, mon Dieu, maternal. That would not work for her, not suit her at all. She has avoided all of that, was never a woman with those impulses, has had a tremendously creative and prosperous life because she never felt an iota of longing for a child of her own.

  She will begin chiseling away the unnecessary bulk from the wood on the turntable. Her strength is not what it used to be, otherwise she would simply lean down and swing the turntable around until the other side of the untouched wood is before her. But this block must weigh close to a third of a ton, and she has only two choices: to call to Theo and have him move the turntable, or walk around to the other side of the wood. If she does either, she will have to admit she knows he is there, waiting for her to acknowledge his presence, to engage as he wants to engage.

  She’s not ready for whatever he needs to say to her, and so she will stare for a while at the wood until a wide ray of sunlight finds it, and her. Oui, there, just beyond the large rounded form, is the smaller one, peeking out, not quite ready to emerge, but its
tentativeness is falling away. She will angle her head upwards to the deep-blue sky hanging beyond the huge windows. On the ledge, pigeons are cooing. She will want to smoke another clove cigarette, but she structures that vice as carefully as she works her materials, and she has an hour to go before she allows herself the second of her working day.

  Since she is the one who has forgotten something important, something the two of them discussed during the drunken night, she will decide she might as well commence the communication that Theo wants. She can feel his intent to sit on the stair until either she, or he, begins.

  She will say, “I hear you breathing up there, Theo. I am old, not deaf. If you want to say something to me, come down here, pull up a stool, and we can talk like the adults that we are. Oui?”

  In an instant, Theo is on the studio floor, his bare feet kicking up dust, lifting one of the many stools in the studio, placing it close, swiveling to face her.

  Paloma will not move, only stare at the bottom of the butternut wood, chiseled away. She thought it might be a flat base, but the wood is demanding there be no base at all, just the two forms freestanding, everything else carved away.

  Then she will sigh, and swivel, and she and Theo will be face-to-face, just inches apart.

  “Miss Rosen,” Theo will say, and Paloma’s heart will sink, for the lost artifact must be major.

  He only calls her Miss Rosen when he is very nervous. Most of the time he does not use her name, neither first nor last. She knows he finds calling her Paloma challenging, as if he is not entitled to presume such closeness, and yet ils sont proches, the two of them spend more of their spare time with each other than with anyone else. He calls her Miss Rosen when he feels he has something to confess—when he runs the vacuum over some trinket that was sucked up into the hose and makes the machine smoke and splutter and die, when he borrows one of her old books and accidentally leaves it on the subway. These small things will never faze Paloma, but cause Theo grievous pain. She will wonder what happened in his young life to make him fear that such small mistakes would incur the ire of another, result in untoward fury he expects to be expended on him. More than once, she will have to say to him firmly, and as kindly as she can, that he is not to worry, that she knows he did not do whatever it is on purpose, aware, when telling her of some misstep, how he seems to fear the slap of a hand, the punch of a fist.

  While he stares at her, and Paloma stares at the base of the wood, she will again wish she remembered more of the particulars of the family stories he told her last night, wonders if, within their coming conversation, and without inflicting too much insult, she might ask him to repeat what she cannot recall.

  “Miss Rosen,” he will say again. “I want to talk about the plans for the dinner party Saturday night. We sent out all those email invitations last night, and most everyone has confirmed.”

  Dinner party? Emails sent out in their drunken state? Screw her schedule, she thinks, and pulls the packet of cloves from her overalls, her hand slightly shaking when she lights it, breathing in deeply and exhaling a stream.

  “Theo, please explain. Too much rye last night. I have no recollection of discussing, or agreeing to, a dinner party. I don’t have dinner parties anymore, not in years. I cannot believe I would have agreed to such a thing.”

  “But you did,” Theo will say, keeping his voice even. “You thought it was a great idea, then had me explain who everyone was before I added their name to the email invitation we sent. You even chose the evite we selected.”

  “Oh, mon Dieu, qu’est-ce que tu racontes? Je ne comprends pas. Un dîner? Non, c’est impossible. Je ne l’ai pas jeté un dîner pour un certain temps. Exactement qui ne nous invitons?”

  When Theo does not respond, she will realize she has spoken to him entirely in French, and he has only picked up the basics in the several months he has lived with her, doing her bidding.

  “The whole thing is impossible,” she will say. “I was drunk.”

  “Maybe later, but not then, or at least you didn’t seem drunk to me, just telling me about the dinner parties you used to throw.”

  A discussion of the dinner parties she used to throw is strong evidence; when she’s had a little too much to drink, she tends to remember the past. Only then does she permit herself sentimentality, an essential release valve for how tightly controlled she is in her work, where sentiment is forbidden. Sober, the past has no place, only the future.

  “How many people did we invite?”

  “Besides you and me? Eighteen. You said, ‘It’s time we fill the space with laughter again, and music, and delicious food. It’s time to have the dining-room table properly used, the chairs occupied by interesting people.’”

  She will think first, what kind of language is besides you and me, then she will think, Yes, she could feasibly have spoken such words. In the past, she regularly threw gorgeous, raucous dinner parties, but now she wants no such thing in her life. Theo, however, apparently does. And she apparently agreed.

  “When you interviewed me, you wanted to know if I could set the table for a formal dinner party. You haven’t had me do that yet. And I can. I Googled how to do it, and printed out pictures of how everything should look on the table.”

  “D’accord. Return, Theo, to the beginning of it all. Whom did we invite?”

  “I have the list,” and he will unfold a wadded piece of paper pulled from the back pocket of his jeans, unfolding, and unfolding, and then smoothing it out, and then he will say, “Ready?”

  “Non, mais read your list anyway.”

  Paloma will recognize most of the names, substantial people in the art world: curators at three New York City museums; gallery owners, three based in Chelsea, two out in refurbished sections of Brooklyn, all representing new and young artists on the ascent, and selling a ton of work; the second-in-command of a Los Angeles museum, which, according to an article she read in the New York Times, is enduring much squabbling among board members. Also on Theo’s list will be three writers, for Art Forum, Frieze, and October, and a Parkett editor involved in artist monographs and catalogues raisonnés that Paloma has read with approval and pleasure. She personally knows two of the people on the list, the Floridian matriarch and patriarch who commissioned works from her in 1991. Physical giants, their raison d’être is the collecting of modern art—paintings, sculptures, video installations of people doing the same thing again and again. They own many thousands of pieces, lately keen on flashy sculptures, derivative works by a man who cares much about his looks and oversees an army of technicians. The family owns so much art they built their own museum, now open to the public, the surf not far in the distance. Paloma sculpted two pieces for them. The first, two stacked onyx cubes, each five feet square, with dicelike holes. The juxtaposition piece, in stark alabaster, was five squares and rectangles piled high, but much carved away from their centers, the dice holes writ large. She spent two weeks in Florida as their guest, left in peace in their three-story beach house. Eventually, the work was placed on a high dune, sea grass surrounding it, which could be seen through the back picture window, sand and sea and grass moving through the seasons, rising and falling, ever visible around and through the empty spaces.

  Only three names will mean nothing to her, and Theo will explain that Mikhail Marovich is his friend, and he is bringing his wife, Vanessa, and a friend of theirs, about whom Theo knows nothing. This, Paloma will realize, is the first time Theo has invited any of his friends to the loft, though she has told him he is free to do so, as long as he does not permit them to disturb her, does not bring them down to the studio whether she is working or out.

  What Paloma will want to know is how Theo knows these people, well enough to have their email addresses, familiar enough to invite them to a dinner party two nights hence at her loft. A dinner party on a Saturday evening in late August when most people who can afford to be gone from the hot city that never quiets are long gone, which includes all the names she recognizes.

&
nbsp; She will wonder how her Theo—who works for veritable nickels, for a place to live and readily available food, for the educational course in the history of sculpture that she has set for him—crossed paths with any of them. In the normal course of his day working for her, never would he meet such people at the art stores, galleries, and museums she sends him to.

  And how has he emailed them and received affirmative responses so quickly, every one of whom must have altered weekend plans to attend?

  “Explain to me, Theo, how you know these people.”

  Looking down at the dusty cement floor, Theo will say, “Don’t ask me to explain. But will you trust me?”

  He will not lift his eyes to meet hers.

  Paloma will think that if he had met them all at some arty shindig, he would have told her, but as far as she knows, Theo does not receive invitations to parties.

  It is then she will wonder if these people are related to Theo’s secretive nights out of the loft. Surely, the Floridians are not, but perhaps he has met the rest in a way that does not give him satisfaction or pleasure, that prevents him from telling her the truth, and yet he wants them to meet her.

  This moment, Paloma Rosen will realize, is the moment, when she proves to both Theo and herself the love she has for him. An internal battle will wage inside of her. She will not want to be involved in any of this, not at all, and the forecast of unhappiness it will bring into her world.

  After the wiry tension strings far out between them, she will finally say, “Oui, je vais tu faire confiance.”

  “Does confiance mean confidence?” Theo will ask. “That you have confidence in me, that you will go through with the dinner party you agreed to?”

  They will stare at each other for a long moment, and Paloma Rosen will look back to the butternut wood and think there is so much to do to get the carving truly under way, and then, that a dinner party at this stage in her life, with such people coming to dine, specifically to meet her, is completely at odds with the philosophy by which she has worked as an artist. She does not need them, or want them, fears what might happen if she opens the door and lets them in. The Floridians are a different story, but Paloma rarely mixes with her collectors once her work is set in place.