History of Art

by Margaret Luongo

  He sounded to Lorna like someone pretending to be earnest in order to get what he wanted. She couldn’t be sure. What business was his sense of irony to her? A sale was a sale. They made arrangements to meet at four. By then, Sondra would be at the gallery, having assumed Lorna’s role, and Lorna would let her deal with the man.

  She pulled open the door to a café; she needed something to steady herself. She sat at the marble counter and ordered coffee and a slice of apple cake. In the mirror behind the counter, she watched a young Korean couple seated at a low table, taking pictures of each other in the weak light. The woman posed with an enormous forkful of pancake poised at her wide-open mouth. Then the woman photographed the man ladling syrup from a crock onto his pancake. Abruptly, they bundled into their puffy coats, wrapped scarves around their heads, and left—their food uneaten.

  When she felt a squeeze at her elbow, she expected a tourist wanting her to take a photo, but it was Maarten, the only friend of hers and Bernard’s that she would miss.

  “Drowning my sorrows,” she said.

  Maarten sat next to her at the counter, his sandy hair falling across his brow. “In pastry,” he said. “A very American mercy killing.”

  Lorna nodded. “Sweet; a semblance of wholesomeness. I see what you mean.”

  She had known Maarten before she’d even met Bernard; in fact, it was Maarten who had introduced them. Rather, Bernard had shown up in Maarten’s studio when Lorna was helping him print, to complain about the latest increase in gallery rent. It was Lorna who had suggested the move to the canal-level space, to take advantage of a uniquely Dutch situation.

  “Must you leave so quickly?” Maarten asked.

  Lorna smiled vaguely at his ink-darkened fingernails. She chewed the last bit of cake and wiped the corners of her mouth. “I have no job after today.” She’d had to ask her father for plane fare home. Every day between today and the day she left would be full of final moments—her last appelgebach, last walk to the gallery, last viewing of BBC World News with Buttons, last trip up the cathedral bell tower. The last time she’d see Maarten.

  “I’m going to Austria for a month,” he said. “My studio will sit empty. Make your art. Don’t go home empty-handed.”

  Her heart fluttered—she loved him for taking her seriously—but she felt a pang at “empty-handed.” She’d considered how her circumstances might be different, had she stayed with Maarten—not that they’d been a couple; Bernard had moved too swiftly for that. For a week she had shown up at Maarten’s studio at 8:00 a.m. to work, sometimes bearing breakfast; then suddenly she was waking up in Bernard’s bed and falling asleep at night to his talk about theory. Of Maarten he’d said, “He’s a very talented craftsperson.”

  “Tempting,” she said, and she saw herself working into the evenings, joining Maarten for dinner, the two of them existing peacefully in their work and repose. Her face burned, and she looked down at her plate.

  “Won’t you feel better, going home with a little momentum? Take some time for yourself.”

  “I thought I’d been doing that,” she said. “What have I been doing?”

  “You are a lovely person,” Maarten said, and Lorna felt the words like a punch in the gut. She did not feel lovely, and what good was lovely when you had nothing to show for it?

  Outside the coffee shop, Maarten kissed her three times and slouched off toward his studio. Lorna crossed the street and took the stone staircase down to the canal level. The gallery was housed in a cellar, the entrance not three feet from the lip of the canal. She unlocked the heavy wooden door and shoved until it gave way. Swollen with moisture, it had become more and more difficult to open over the years. She had already tidied up the gallery and its small office. Later, Sondra would swoop in with boxes of promotional materials for the next exhibition; over the next few days, the paintings would be taken down, and a new show installed. Lorna flicked on the lights and headed to the office to put away her purse and coat. She flipped open the date book and recorded the day’s appointment. Maybe she would handle the sale herself—her final triumph—and go out on a high note.

  At the front door, she heard animated Dutch voices. A soft thudding punctuated the loud chatter; it was Sondra—with ­another woman, a customer perhaps—leaning her shoulder into the door. The door gave abruptly, and Sondra and her companion stepped into the gallery, their conversation uninterrupted. Lorna stood in the archway between the two rooms and waited for Sondra to notice her, but she was deeply engaged in describing abstract expressionism, if Lorna understood correctly. The other woman nodded and murmured recognition when Sondra mentioned the CoBrA artists. Lorna noted wryly Sondra’s suit and the effect it must have had on her morning: winter-white wool with white fur at the cuffs and collar of the jacket. She must have driven over in that get-up, Lorna thought, which meant harrowing parking, too near the canal for her comfort. She considered retreating into the office and saying nothing. Obviously Sondra knew she was there. If Lorna failed to greet them, Sondra would report to Bernard that she had been cold; if she interrupted to say hello, Sondra might report “sad” or “desperate.” She folded her arms and leaned against the doorway, waiting to be acknowledged.

  She thought Sondra too old for Bernard, but in fact she and Sondra were the same age. Sondra’s energy and efficiency unnerved Lorna. She always had something relevant to say about a painting, an artist, the artist’s palette, his or her previous work, a similar exhibition or a write-up she had read. Her wall-to-wall chatter exhausted Lorna, and she felt herself growing sleepy now. She cleared her throat. Sondra continued to talk, while her companion nodded compulsively. Lorna coughed, and Sondra glanced over the customer’s shoulder without pausing. Lorna doubled over with a fake sneeze. When she righted herself, rubbing her nose for authenticity’s sake, the two women were staring at her.

  She saluted them. “Goedendag!” she cried.

  She introduced herself to the woman, whom she assumed to be a customer, someone Sondra had roped in to see the old show before the new one came in. No doubt she hoped to make some last-minute sales so she could tell Bernard that she’d saved the gallery from the torpor of Lorna’s tenure. At the end of the day, Sondra would clap her hands together, signifying the start of a new era of productivity and energy. Now the corners of her mouth twitched downward. When she caught Lorna’s eye, Lorna gestured to the back room.

  “Sondra, why don’t you make us some coffee?” she said. “There are biscuits, too.”

  Sondra’s neck had begun to redden—splotches here and there, ever-growing continents of color, seeping together to display a mass of embarrassed frustration. She glided away to the back room, neck glowing, to make the coffee.

  Lorna began her tour with the pig painting, affecting Sondra-­style chatter.

  “This painting exemplifies the contemporary Russian take on portraiture.”

  The woman laughed, so Lorna kept going.

  “Think of Rembrandt and Franz Hals: the active gestures, the intimacy of the gaze. Now think of Reynolds and Raeburn: the saucy, impudent looks, the informal poses—people captured in everyday activities. And there’s the influence of Millet: common people in their common tasks—the merging of landscape and portrait. All of it here.” She gestured to the pig. “Centuries of innovation in painting. The frank gaze—he’s really looking, don’t you feel that? The unusual composition—and of course he’s in the barnyard and not elevated or isolated from his milieu. The pig insists on its importance.”

  The woman smiled warmly and shook her head.

  “Do you like it?” Lorna asked.

  “No,” the woman said. “But your talk is charming.” The woman revealed that she was an old friend of Sondra’s from school, that she and her husband had just bought their first home in Overvecht and needed a painting for the front room. Something abstract.

  “Your own home,” Lorna said. “How nice. I’ll let you look while I check on Sondra.”

  Sondra had assembled an attractive t
ray of three coffee cups and a plate of biscuits. Lorna’s throat tightened. “That’s really very nice of you, Sondra,” she said, “but I’ve already had my coffee.”

  Another person wouldn’t be so conflicted, she thought, and this was the whole problem—the whole joke of it—the way Bernard said, “Llllooorrrnnnaaaaaa,” making an agony of her name. She couldn’t even commit to humiliating the woman who would replace her at work and at home.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she lied. “This is really very nice.”

  “Yes,” Sondra said, lifting the tray, “it certainly is.”

  The women sat down at a small round table. Lorna vowed to relax. In a week she would be home; she’d made her choices, and those choices had nothing to do with Sondra or even Bernard. Over the phone, her father had cleared his throat and mentioned that the church school needed an art teacher; wouldn’t she enjoy that? The job was hers—it was that easy. To be decent in these final moments, in a place she might never see again, would cost her nothing; no doubt she would feel better for having acted properly.

  Lorna asked Sondra’s friend about her new home: What did it look like? The woman shrugged and shook her head. “Nothing special—typical Dutch.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make it special,” Lorna said. They sat in silence, Sondra absently scraping her fingernail against the tabletop. Exasperated by her senseless intrusion—she’d wasted her own time, as much as anyone’s—Lorna felt she should finish her coffee, that it would be strange not to. She mentioned the missing American student. Perhaps there had been some development. “So terrible,” the friend said. Sondra agreed.

  “Maybe it isn’t,” Lorna said.

  Sondra’s friend replaced her cup in its saucer. Both waited for Lorna to continue.

  “The girl comes to this amazing place, sees things she’s never seen. Going home seems impossible, disappointing!” Lorna heard herself talking loudly. Her heart thudded and she forgot to breathe, which made speaking difficult. “So she disappears her old self and starts to make herself over, all new.”

  The women were silent for a moment. Then Sondra spoke. “If what you say is true,” she said, “she deserves to be at the bottom of a canal.”

  The friend tried to protest, but Sondra interrupted.

  “She’s rejecting her past, her family, her family’s way of life. It’s an insult.”

  “I think it’s fanciful, your idea,” the friend said. “Like a fairy tale.”

  Sondra tilted her cup back and downed the rest of her coffee. She took the napkin from her lap and placed it on the table.

  “To abandon the people who love her, to cause them such worry and heartache,” she shook her head. “And what will she do here?”

  The friend smiled faintly. “I’m sure she could amuse herself until her money ran out. It would be an adventure.”

  Lorna nodded, grateful. “At the very least.”

  Sondra leaned back in her chair, folding her arms under her bosom. “And after she runs out of money, she can find some Dutch man to support her.”

  The friend’s shoulders twitched slightly. Lorna’s face grew hot.

  “I see what you mean. Good luck in your new home,” she said to the friend.

  “It was lovely to meet you,” the woman said. “You made me appreciate the pig. I can’t say I like it. . . .” she trailed off and laughed a bit.

  Lorna gathered her coat and purse. So many things she’d never intended had happened just the same. She didn’t think she could justify herself or her actions. At the front of the gallery, on a small side table, she spied a stack of glossy postcards, advertising the current show. She had designed the card on the computer in the back room, with Buttons on her lap. Might as well get rid of them, she thought. Sondra or Bernard would just throw them away.

  Typical for March, the sky was a thin gray. A light mist settled itself on the landscape. Utrecht in winter appeared mostly black and white to her eye, with a rich palette of grays in between. In the countryside, from the train window, she saw a different spectrum: browns and the tawny hues of dried grasses, the russet woolly coat of a horse or cow in a field. In the city, though, winter glowed pearly and cool. She ducked into cafés and restaurants, wandered around some of the shops and handed cards to the trickle of tourists and students. She zigzagged across the canal bridges, stopping at a butcher’s shop here, a pub there, and eventually made her way to the old city center. She reserved some of the cards to hand out by the cathedral. In the beginning she’d visited almost daily. She’d told herself that the tours helped her learn, and it was true—each time, she picked up a few more Dutch words. On the phone, she could tell her parents truthfully that she went to church nearly every day. Today, as a treat, she would end her last day of work with a trip up the bell tower—all 112 meters of it—for a last look at Utrecht from above, a sight burned in her memory but one that never failed to calm and refresh her. Looking out across the rooftops from far above reminded her how small she was; and what a balm her insignificance was to her. Every building shrank below the tower, and on clear days, she could see Amsterdam and bits of horizon between the buildings.

  She stood in the square between the cathedral proper and the bell tower, handing out postcards to anyone who would make eye contact. Tourists gathered to take pictures of the monument to the Dutch killed during the Holocaust—a statue at the center of the courtyard of an angry-looking woman holding aloft a torch. Lorna situated herself nearby, watching the crowd and thinking about packing the remainder of her things. She imagined getting stuck on the bus, sandwiched between her heavy bags, jammed among the commuters. Her heart pounded at the thought of missing her stop, of never extricating herself. Then she saw herself in a classroom: a stick figure clutching safety scissors and a pot of paste, standing before rows of children who awaited her instruction.

  In the middle of her reverie, a soft-looking woman with frizzy brown hair approached her. A man Lorna assumed to be the woman’s husband followed at her elbow. The woman held a camera, and Lorna readied herself. She held out her hand, her hostess smile plastered on her face.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman said in English.

  “I’m happy to take your picture.” Lorna again felt she was too loud—too something.

  The woman ducked her head and patted her hair. “Heavens—I’m a sight.”

  “You’re always a picture,” her husband said.

  The woman ignored him. “Would you mind,” she said to Lorna, “if we took yours?”

  Lorna thought she must have misunderstood. “You want to photograph me?”

  “Would you mind?” the woman asked again, this time the last word catching in her throat. The man suddenly looked irritable. Lorna wondered about ending up in some tourist’s slideshow as an example—of what, she didn’t know. “I’m not Dutch,” she said, fumbling to understand.

  The man and woman exchanged glances. “You remind us of someone,” the woman said.

  Mist had collected on the man’s eyeglasses. “She thinks you look like her sister.”

  “You do,” the woman said, her voice cracking. “Just like her.”

  An image came to Lorna of her parents, sitting in their kitchen, motionless and waiting for her return. “What happened to her—your sister?”

  The woman couldn’t answer. Lorna turned to the man, hoping for good news, feeling she was owed it. “Nothing,” the man said. “Don’t mind her.” He turned his wife away and led her across the courtyard, his arm circled around her back. When the woman paused to look at Lorna over her shoulder, Lorna turned away sharply. She strode to the trash barrel and stuffed the rest of the postcards in, sending a few tumbling to the cobbled courtyard. Brushing past the tour group and into the bell tower, she took the stairs two at a time, hoping to wear herself out by the time she’d gotten to the top. She would have her last view of Utrecht, and that would be that.

  She paused a third of the way up to peer out a rectangular slot in the thick tower wall. The
windows narrowed at their openings, and she felt woozy with the idea of getting stuck. Outside, the statue of the angry woman rose out of the square, and Lorna looked down on her head and the torch she carried. She wondered if the parents of the missing American girl would see their daughter everywhere, always in their peripheral vision, wishing her into existence: at the grocery store or the mall, in their own backyard. For once, she admired her parents’ fortitude.

  She turned from the window and resumed her rushed climb. The higher she went, the narrower the tower became, until the stairs were too steep and the treads too narrow to accommodate her entire foot. The stairwell was big enough for only one now, and she relished the thought of stomping and raging alone. At the top, she would catch her breath and maybe a glimpse of her own lost self, whoever that was. Maybe she would ask a tourist to snap her picture, to keep as evidence of her once-extraordinary potential in this place so far from the ordinary; maybe she would snatch the first camera she saw and hurl it from the tower.

  At the bend in the staircase, a man waited, paused in his descent. Annoyance flashed through her. On second glance, the man looked remarkably like Bernard. Lorna gasped, and tears stung her eyes. An instant later, she realized the man bore no resemblance to Bernard whatsoever. She wondered how far she would have to go to get away from herself. “Could you be less predictable?” she said to herself. “Less tiresome? Please?”

  The man must have been waiting for her to pass and she murmured an apology, wiping tears from her face. She proceeded up the stairs, but he didn’t move aside. Instead, he raised his hand. She understood, or thought she did, and flattened herself against the wall, her heart pounding. Most people preferred to be passed than to pass, but she had run across the odd person—a man, usually—who preferred to be the passer rather than the passee. Still the man didn’t move. Lorna noted his pale complexion and shallow breathing. She had never seen someone get stuck, but she understood the fear. Even people of modest stature had to cant their shoulders, and even so, they were bound to feel the stone walls pressing in on them. She thought she should turn and fetch a guide. Certainly this couldn’t be the first time someone had frozen on the stair; the guide would know what to do. Instead, she found herself moving toward the man.