“She’s a bully. Anyway, C.C. – this thing, tomorrow night? Makes me nervous. MoMA and all.”
“I know. Try not to worry.”
“And when is the surgery?”
C.C. glanced up. “In a week. Let’s not talk about it –”
After supper, Quiola retreated to the guest room; when C.C. knocked, she found her ex in an old, bleach-battered XXL t-shirt, kneeling by the front windows that ran smack along the floor.
“Mind if I intrude?”
“Nope.”
“What are you looking at?”
Quiola got up off the floor, and handed C.C. a black and white snapshot: a woman, about forty, wearing a checked woolen overcoat standing in am empty lot on a cold, snowy day; beside her, a young, very pregnant girl; their hair pulled back from their broad faces in a single braided tail.
“Oh,” said C.C. “these two again.” She examined the picture briefly, since she’d seen it many times before, while Quiola sat cross-legged on the bed. C.C. pulled the sash of her robe tight, placed the photo on a dressing table, and sat down in a chair, knees and hands pressed together, like a kid might sit. “An angry woman, your mother.”
Quiola shrugged. “They do look grim, don’t they? Mom used to say she had a lot to be angry about.”
“And you?”
“Me? You know me. Am I angry?”
“Very funny. You burn. You hum like a wasp’s nest. Now would be a good time for a cigarette,” she added. “If I still smoked.”
“You smoked? I didn’t know that.”
“In the fifties, everyone smoked – sometimes it was nice, you know, not to talk. Just light up and share. Simple.”
“I see. What else don’t you want to talk to me about, besides the you know what?”
C.C. laughed. “Always cutting right to the chase, aren’t you?” She shook her head and rumpled her curly hair. “Nothing, really. I’m restless. I can’t sleep. I hate needles. I hate going under. I loved my father, but I hate doctors.”
“I know. Have you told your brother?”
“Ted?” said C.C. bitterly. “Jesus. You remember what happened the last time I talked to him, don’t you? I haven’t bothered to call. I won’t. He can read the obituary.” She stood up, folded her arms and began to pace, then stopped in the center in the dark room. “Do you think you can stay with me for awhile? Just until I get through this? I’m going to fight it, I will, I promise. I know it’s a lot to ask, after Luke and all, but I –”
“Hush yourself,” said Quiola, “and come here.”
♦
Neither the Plaza nor the Waldorf are now what they once were and, like stately matrons unable to give up their posts, they’ve gone shabby and gaudy. Quiola would’ve asked for a W or a Swisshotel, but Liz remembered them as they had been back in their heyday; she saw the Plaza as if Gatsby and Daisy, Tom, Nick and Jordan were all still in the wedding-cake suite on a hot summer night, caught in the coils of hope and betrayal. She’d insisted on staying there, for its lost glory and for its proximity to Central Park.
“Honestly,” Quiola muttered at the dizzying neon mid-town display, as the stretch limo careened up 6th from Grand Central.
“What?” asked C.C., from a half-mile away on the other side of the stretch.
“Nothing.”
“God it’s so hot, you’d think it was August.”
Studiously deaf, the driver delivered the two women to the Plaza where they found a young man from MoMA stationed at the lobby desk, awaiting the impossible, incredible Liz Moore. He’d been sent over, in person, to greet their guest and to offer her a small token, a platinum and diamond Tiffany brooch. But what Liz hadn’t told the emissary was that he would wait there, at the lobby desk, until C.C. and Quiola arrived. So he’d been standing there, patient and nervous, for about a half-hour.
A long, spare drink of Minnesota water was Liz Moore as she stepped out of the elevator and made her slow way across the lobby; even with her shoulders stooped by arthritis and her strange olive eyes worn beyond worn, Lizzie was still formidable, thin-legged and rangy like an ancient Amelia Earhart, although she preferred to think of herself as Lindbergh, “the hero of my youth,” as she called him. Ignoring MoMA’s young man, who stood as stiff as if petrified by Medusa’s glare, she gave C.C. a kiss on both cheeks, and said,
“You’re looking well, my dear.” Her voice carried the lilt of a Scandinavian mid-west and she wore some sort of pine or evergreen scent, as if she’d been determined to bring the North Country back east with her. “The short hair becomes you.”
“And you,” said C.C., “look marvelous.”
“I’m antediluvian,” said Liz, with slight quaver into a laugh.
“Here,” said Quiola, “let me take these,” as she retrieved two small bags near their feet, one her own, one C.C.’s.
“Ah, Quiola,” said Liz. Her disquieting gaze softened. “Always a pleasure. I thought you were in Paris.”
“I was.”
“How nice of you to come, then.”
“For good, this time.”
“What?” said C.C.
Meanwhile, the man from MoMA, frostbitten by fear, smiled and smiled.
“I don’t intend to go back,” said Quiola quietly.
“We’ll talk about that later,” C.C. muttered. “Can we leave the bags here, or should we take them upstairs?”
The young man cleared his throat. Despite his excellent manners, Quiola could see his eyes shining with a reverence close to hysteria at History, the great, the magnificent, the impossible Liz Moore. History, however, continued to ignore the young man, saying to C.C., “Upstairs. We’re not expected until five. There’s time for a little nip.” Liz tucked an arm in C.C.’s. “Come.”
At this point Quiola stepped in to relieve the poor emissary from MoMA: she answered his questions, accepted his gift, and hastened him away by the possibility that his mere presence might have over-taxed History and perhaps ruined the show. When Quiola finally made it up to the rooms, Liz was chatting idly with C.C. about old friends, scattered or dead, most of whom Quiola had not known or did not know, except by reputation. She poured herself a drink, and put the Tiffany box on the coffee table. C.C. asked Liz what she thought of electronic art.
“Electronic art? There is no such thing. People may be doing it, but it isn’t art. I refuse to ‘e’. No email. I won’t have a cell phone.”
“But a cell can be useful,” said C.C. “I keep one in the Heap, for emergencies.” She shook the ice in her G and T. “Did you know that Mark Twain was one of the first people to put a telephone in his house?”
“You would know that,” said Liz.
“Why not? His home is in Hartford. Can’t say how many times I’ve been there, after visiting Mother. Anyway, Twain had the phone installed in its own little alcove. But he regretted it. Couldn’t stand the ring.”
“A man after my own heart,” said Liz. She sipped sherry, then asked in a lower voice, “And how is your mother?”
“Failing, I’m afraid. I miss her. Alzheimer’s is just so pitiless. I visit, but she doesn’t know me and she’s so…small.”
“Terrible,” murmured Liz. “I’m sorry.” Silence took them, until Liz turned briskly to Quiola and asked, “What do you think of it? Electronic art?”
“Not much. But I’m no expert.”
“Nonsense,” said Liz, with a shrug and quick chop of her knobby hand. “Of course you are. All an artist needs is an eye and –”
Quiola got up and walked to the window. “It’s raining,” she observed.
“Good,” said C.C. “Maybe it’ll cool down.”
But it didn’t cool down. The pavement gave off steam, the temperature barely dropped, the air hung thick with moisture. Once she’d finished with her clothes and face, Liz went and sat beside the hotel window, watching vapor.
August, she thought with disgust. This is city-August. Not April. Not like April at all.
How many sullen summers had she spent in this City, sti
fling, endless in the days before air conditioning? Nights of torture, no relief, little sleep; she’d kept the kitchen window of her fifth floor walk-up open but after a solid month of it, she’d become a life form no higher or drier than a sponge. She’d flogged herself to sketch because that’s why she’d ridden the rails from Minnesota to the glorious, god-awful City, but it was hard to believe it was worth the effort as grit blew in off the street, thick as week-old dust, and the pencil slicked in her hand and sharpening it raised a sweat. She’d open the window, then start the fans and everything not tied or weighted down flew about, including more grit. She wore a sleeve-protector to keep the grit off but it was awful. Desire wilted. All she could think of was a biting, icy Lake Superior bath. When the end of the heat came, it came in inches, until all at once it was freezing, and she had no money for heat.
The Moore retrospective was set to begin just after the galleries closed for the day, and by invitation only. MoMA was whitely lit and stark – to sanctify the dead, Lizzie always said. Ushered in discreetly, the three women met with the curator in his office, and then headed for the show. Lizzie squeezed C.C.’s hand, a reflex, as the curator, anxious as a park squirrel at lunch-time, hovered beside the elevator, waiting for his famous guest to walk the short length from his office to where he stood.
Liz Moore took her time. She couldn’t rush, her legs were not as reliable as they’d been the first time she’d visited MoMA. No one had paid her the least mind that day, just another Jane Q. Public, drab, unkempt, hungry. MoMA became her nemesis, and her church. It had the effect, sometimes, of that cold bath she couldn’t afford – do you want, Elizabeth Sarah Moore, she used to ask herself, do you really want your work embalmed here? Hung on a wall where only people who can scrape up a fee can get in to see it? That’s why she’d done book illustrations – there was always the public library, open to anyone. Still, MoMA had caught her. Over the years friends donated her work, even the Davises, rot them.
Such a silly, wasteful effort, she thought, getting the old lady all dolled up to endure kindnesses seldom bestowed on the elderly. She should know. She’d been elderly for almost half her life.
“Just look at me,” she muttered, catching a reflection off the elevator chrome. She leaned over to C.C. “Should I get my hair colored?”
“Should you what?” said C.C., startled.
“Well? Look at it. My hair. You think it could’ve turned a definite white like yours is doing, or a stunning gray. But, no, it’s thinned and faded to no color at all.”
Quiola burst out laughing, while the curator stared at the closing elevator doors.
“Well?” Liz demanded. “Color is everything. Especially blue,” and she smiled, which appeared to encourage the curator. But her smile was not for him, it was for blue: midnight, cerulean, navy, cobalt, all the fragments of water and sky from the Mediterranean clarity of California midday to the ebony of indigo night.
“Never thought of you as a blue-haired lady,” said Quiola, deadpan. “But if you want, I’m sure we can find a hairdresser in the City to give you a rinse.”
Fortunately for the curator, the elevator doors re-opened here. Liz let C.C. have her arm, Quiola her elbow, and they made their slow way to a podium of sorts, where History was going to be enthroned for the event. As they moved through the applauding crowd Liz was glad she hadn’t worn her glasses. All the faces, as featureless as a Matisse, seemed wonderfully distant.
“Who are these people?” she muttered.
“Just make nice,” whispered C.C.
“No, really,” said Liz, a bit louder and more annoyed. “My friends are all dead.”
“Not yet, they aren’t,” snapped C.C.
Liz let herself be lowered onto what amounted to a divan, like a tough Venus on the half-shell. People nattered on at her, and she answered with what she hoped passed for polite nonsense, and was grateful when Quiola handed her a glass of iced sherry – her particular kind of sherry – along with a plate of goodies. She concentrated on what mattered: food. Tomorrow: a ride around the Park.
“I hope the goddamn weather clears,” she said, to no one in particular.
Unlike Liz, both Quiola and C.C. had working obligations at the opening: C.C. had a “shed” full of things her dealer said she couldn’t deal, and an installation postponed; meanwhile, Quiola shopped half-heartedly around for someone who might deal her into the humming hub of the art universe. C.C. might have helped, but the older woman thought it would be vulgar to do so, since they’d once been lovers. Liz would let no one take advantage of her belated fame, not even Quiola.
The gallery buzzed with the tense of pitch. Quiola soon ran out of gas. Deflation set in, and she longed for the one sanctuary that Liz’s fame made possible, the Plaza suite, full of chintz and silence and a wet bar. She scanned the room and found C.C. standing, alone, before one of the smallest canvases in the gallery.
As a rule, a Moore canvas is big. Sometime in the 1940s Liz went large with minutiae. Yet, unlike O’Keefe, she’d chosen minutia her generation thought unsuited to her sex: no giant genital flowers for her. Instead she’d harkened back to her childhood, when she’d been schooled to sketch bees from her father’s apiary, to make the miniature sculpture of insect anatomy into arching, huge but intricate surreal abstraction.
Not everyone’s taste, to be sure.
Yet her famous massive miniatures did not mean she’d given up on small. C.C. was standing in front of a sequence of a dozen tiny paintings, called the Series B. Liz had done one a year, for a dozen years, as a chronicle of how that particular year had been to live. She’d started the series as something between and joke and a jab in 1945, when her future husband, the sculptor Paul Gaines, complained that she was so often distracted, so unto herself, he wondered if she even knew the War was over. As a response, she painted Series B One. In it, a lone figure, thin and dark, dances away from the jagged teeth of a fluid architecture he also grasps in one hand, so it looks as if the figure is a matador, and the architecture his cape. The figure’s other arm is bathed in light and reaches to the edge of the canvas and in that light tiny people dance, make love, fly and sing: a satiric and whimsical answer to Paul’s irritation. Of course she knew the War was over.
Each of the twelve in Series B was painted in the same precise, intense manner, some more complex that B One, some less. By the time Quiola made her way across the busy room C.C. was at Series B Three, her face tented, unreadable. When she felt Quiola beside her she said, “I haven’t seen this one in so long. My parents owned it, you know, but they never hung it. Couldn’t bear it.”
“I thought Series B belonged to the museum?”
“It does, now. Father donated it, and also his version of Wirkorgan, back when the Museum acquired the others in the Series. It was a relief to Mom and Dad to have a legitimate reason to get them both out of the house.”
“But why? They’re so lovely.”
Wirkorgan and Series B Three are, in fact, lovely, the latter so vital and mystifyingly alive, the former showing a naked white child, fat as a cherub, who gives off a hot, blue light that graduates to rose-gold. The flaming child vaults, a diver defeating gravity, toward a corner of the canvas where stars dot space. Gracefully looped around the child’s shoulders and neck is gossamer black lace. It drifts across the figure’s back and vanishes off the canvas.
So why did Tom and Nancy Davis find them unbearable?
“It was a bad year,” was all C.C. could say that night in MoMA.
“1947?” asked Quiola, helplessly. “I don’t understand.”
“Look at the lace. See?”
Quiola bent forward. “Names? A scarf of names? I never noticed before.”
“You can’t see them in reproductions. Liz used a magnifying glass to paint them – the names on the blacklist. She added name after name, until 1952, I think.”
“Were your parents blacklisted?”
C.C. laughed a pleased laugh. “Oh, no, nothing like that. McCarthy outra
ged them but they had no sympathy for communism. Conservative liberals.”
Quiola glanced over her shoulder. “I wonder how she’s doing.”
“She’s fine. Look at her. Drinking it in. Who is that man? He looks as if he’d kiss her ass, doesn’t he?”
“You’d think we were nothing more than country mice,” said Quiola, folding her arms tight across her chest.
“Ah, but she’s waited a long time for this. Let her enjoy it.”
Huffing, Quiola turned away, back to Series B. “Her work I can stomach,” she said. “Liz herself is another matter.”
Series B. Critics will tell you that these Moore paintings are an idiosyncratic take on the post-war years in America. Series B Three 1947, they say, commemorates both young American daring – Yeager’s breaking the sound barrier – and American paranoia – Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunt.
But in 1947, there was also Tucker.
Liz called Tuck Davis her watching child. His eyes, of no striking color, nevertheless caught you: large, and bright and watching. Photographs show a boy whose head, adorned with hair in long ringlets, seems too big for his nose, and his nose too delicate for those eyes and his eyes too watching for comfort. In that summer of 1947, as Nancy had told Al and Pat Kronen, the Davises had vacationed in Florida. They’d camped near a small lake. Picture this, then: the family eating BBQ, and here comes Tucker up from the lakeside, his wet diapers sagging because he’s running as quick as his fat legs can go and right behind him, clumsy swift, a ’gator, jaws widening and then Dr. Davis is there, his big hands slipping under the boy’s arms, and Tucker swings in the air. The ’gator, discouraged, stops, snaps his jaws shut and saunters away, safe inside his ancient armor, hungry still.
Thing of it was, Tucker just giggled. When Tom saw his son’s bright, laughing eyes, he turned the boy over a knee, right there, in front of everyone, lowered the sodden diaper, and whacked him until his white, new flesh reddened. Standing the half-naked child on his feet, the doctor scolded, but Tucker had become a ball of fury, a fury so fierce Dr. Davis slapped the cheek of it, and astonished, the boy sat down. Yanking his son back up, Dr. Davis carried him by his arms, his chubby legs stiff with surprise, to the screen porch. He sat him on a wicker chair and said,
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