Art on Fire

by Hilary Sloin

  This casual disinterest in females on the part of a huge, handsome, and by all accounts kempt man has not escaped postmodernists, who speculate endlessly about Paul Bunyan’s sexual orientation. Such speculation, is, of course, “supported” by selected passages from the multitudinous tellings of the legend. R. Randy Dorff, Ph.D., Transgendered Activist, Queer Theorist, and Chair of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Department of Queer Cultural Studies at Harvard University claims that Babe, Bunyan’s “faithful, huge [i.e., well-hung] blue ox is a metaphorical surrogate for Bunyan’s gay lover.”76 He also raises the question of a “genital vacuum” in the painting, resulting in the absence of “identification of or commitment to a specific gender. The absence of a defined link between the female head and the well-endowed masculine body points out a conflict within the artist.”77 He disputes the classification of Bunyan as hypo-realism (or pseudo-realism, as it would later be called) and, instead, calls it “metanarcissistic self-portraiture . . . In other words, wish fulfillment—the painter portraying her self as she would like to be seen, hyperbolizing her desire, emphasizing her wish to embody the ultimate specimen of the dominant gender—a male, macho giant. Bunyan,” writes Dorff, “attacks at the most primal level; it depicts the male’s worst nightmare: a giant dyke with an ax.”78

  Chapter Sixteen

  To celebrate Isabella’s 25th birthday, Vivian invited an array of her own acquaintances for a barbecue. Only an hour or so before the guests were due to arrive, Isabella lay with legs spread beneath the faucet of the bathtub; thousands, even millions of fingers tapped her clitoris until she shook and clenched the porcelain edges, gritting her teeth, fierce in her determination to rid herself forever of desire. How much longer could she go unintroduced to oral pleasure, without words whispered close to the earlobes, fingers pressing the knobs of her spine? She was too old to be sexless and knew she could not—would not!—live much longer. Hence, there was no point in saving herself. And though she sensed there were problems next door, she was not confident that LeeAnn Frank’s (i.e., the Little One) fan of blond hair would soon be spread across her yellowed pillowcase.

  Six years had passed since her suicide attempt. The details were vague: an uncooperative Mustang, her sister and the Chinese girl getting it on in the attic. She’d woken in a hospital room, an oxygen mask over her face, her head throbbing so hard it seemed someone was inside, hitting her skull with a hammer. The first sight upon opening her eyes had been Vivian blowing long gray streams of smoke out the tiny crack of an open window. She’d never felt so sick, so horrible, so repentant. She’d promised her parents: never again. No more suicide attempts. They were relieved, if not wholly convinced.

  Isabella moved into the attic, where she hoped to be afforded maximum privacy with which to focus on her novel. Really, really focus, she told Mrs. Val Noonan. Still, she maintained an arsenal of pills and vodka just in case. It wasn’t long before she’d abandoned A Gift to the Universe and begun a volume of sestinas in the voice of Sylvia Plath. But this proved more difficult than it had initially seemed. Over and over Isabella struggled to use the word “oven” in six stanzas without resorting to mentions of cooking or the holocaust.

  “Perhaps you are focusing too much on the suicide. Are you aware that she went to Smith?” Mrs. Val Noonan had suggested, always trying to work her alma mater into any conversation. Once again, Isabella had tried to articulate the importance of suicide, how it was to her what, say, Vermont was to Frost, Maude Gonne to Yeats, the Self to May Sarton.

  Vivian let Isabella borrow a light-green, ultrasuede dress to wear to the party. Its deep plunge highlighted Isabella’s ample cleavage. Vivian herself donned a bright orange dress with white sandals, a bold choice that drew out her bain-de-soleil tan. Her veined hands ended in slick painted nails, manicured smooth, curved at the edges, the coffee-colored shells long enough to conjure femininity, short enough to assert competence.

  The guests arrived in groups. Alfonse manned the grill, pressing down on the burgers so he could watch the fat hit the hot coals, while Vivian adjusted napkins and checked to see that the citronella candles were working. Isabella stood alone against the house, sworn to remain sober. Must not embarrass Mom, she repeated like a mantra.

  And then, emerging from around the side of the house, sulking behind his parents, appeared Aaron Newman. Like an angel. He was the stepson of Joycie Newman, a partner at Kasselbaum Kasselbaum Steele, the New Haven law firm where Vivian worked as a paralegal. Vivian worshipped Joycie the way girls adore, say, Julie Andrews, always describing her as “a beautiful, brilliant black lady.” Each time she said it, she wondered whether Joycie would take offense at her including the word “black” in her description, or whether it would be more insulting if she omitted it. Joycie’s four books on women’s prisons, all autographed, dominated the shelves in the DeSilva living room, their stark white covers having long ago usurped the volumes on raising a gifted child.

  Isabella watched as Aaron Newman skulked behind his stepmother and father, practically yawning from boredom. He was blond and thin, not quite a boy, nor a girl. Something much more interesting. She knew she could push him around if it came to that, imagined that having him on top of her would be like a fine quilt, his weight evenly distributed, covering her limbs. His lithe body and smooth fingers made her nipples hard.

  She shifted her feet and leaned her body against the house, tucked two fingers under a rotting shingle, and swallowed hard. “God,” she whispered.

  “Say hello to Joycie, Terence, and Aaron,” Vivian demanded cheerfully.

  Isabella forced a smile and glanced down nervously, suddenly worried that something was wrong with her dress—her breasts were exposed or she’d spilled something on the front.

  Alfonse came over and shook everyone’s hand. His apron, on which was printed “Life is too short to drink cheap wine,” was already splattered with grease. Vivian pointed at the stains disapprovingly, and said “Oh, Al! I can’t take you anywhere,” then shook her head at Joycie. All the adults but Alfonse scattered; still Aaron remained. He stood near Isabella and faced front.

  “Nice dress,” he smiled.

  “Thanks. Is that your mother?” Isabella asked.

  “That’s not really possible,” said Aaron.

  “Oh,” Isabella nodded. “Because she’s black?”

  “No. Because she’s only 35. She’d had to have had me when she was, uh . . .”

  Isabella knew the answer; still she waited. He was supposed to be some sort of whiz kid, according to Vivian.

  “Thirteen,” he said finally. “Don’t think so,” he flashed a sarcastic smile, then bent over and took a beer from the cooler.

  “I like her tights,” Isabella said.

  “Yeah,” he surveyed his stepmother. “She loves purple.”

  Isabella watched as he twisted the cap. She heard the crack of gas. The cold steam curled above the brown lip of the bottle. Aaron threw his head back and took a long drink, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like something stuck in his throat. She listened for the sound of the beer maneuvering around this huge, centrally located obtrusion, but there was no evidence of a struggle. God, she thought, I would kill for one sip. She praised herself for having had the foresight to wedge a bottle of Smirnoff’s between the oil burner and the basement wall. And then, too, there was the emergency stash in the attic.

  “You look beautiful, baby,” Alfonse touched her back on his way to the grill, nodded at Aaron, scrutinizing his tennis shoes and slack, faded jeans.

  Isabella felt delicate and feminine. Like a piece of glass on a windowsill refracting the late afternoon light. Like Natalie Wood in West Side Story. She wished she could speak in a breathy voice, laugh up and down the scale, cover her mouth shyly with two fingers. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. Catherine in the presence of Heathcliff. Anna Karenina. Madame Bovary. Did a woman ever run out of inimitable role models?

  She took a step closer to Aaron, inhaled his smell�
�sweat, lemony deodorant, beer. She watched the top of the large Styrofoam cooler lifted each time a misted brown bottle of German beer was removed, then passed among uninterested fingers.

  “Wanna go for a walk?” Aaron asked.

  Just then the lesbians emerged from the hedges. The Little One carried a gift-wrapped book. “Hello, Bella,” she said, smiling at Aaron.

  “Thanks so much,” Isabella took the package. “This is Aaron,” she motioned to her left and tucked the book under her arm. “Aaron, these are the neighbors.”

  Vivian arrived with a plate of hot dogs and hamburgers on bright white buns, half the burgers blanketed in orange slices of cheese. “Isabella,” she said in a high pitch, “Go show Aaron the house. Leave the neighbors alone.” She held the plate out to the lesbians. The Little One took a hot dog; the Big One waved the plate away. “Thanks. I don’t eat meat,” she said.

  Isabella wanted to tell the neighbors how she’d tried to write a book about them. But there was Aaron. Waiting. She looked at his shoes, his bare feet inside sneakers. The neighbors, after all, lived right next door. She might never see Aaron again.

  “See you,” she said to the neighbors, certain the Little One had flinched with jealousy.

  She had not yet said hello to Mrs. Val Noonan, who was standing at the Weber beside Alfonse. The agent’s legs were crossed at the ankles, her head was bent; she giggled and pulled at a corner of molten cheese with bitten-down nails. Alfonse patted her shoulder, gestured and laughed.

  “I have some vodka in the basement,” Isabella said.

  Aaron followed her around the side of the house. She felt him look at her body as she quietly pulled back the screen door. They slipped in, walked slowly, uncertainly, down the basement steps. It was cool and dark. A pile of dirty laundry lay on the cement floor. Isabella kicked it aside. She located the bottle but could not dislodge it from behind the oil burner. Aaron happily took over, rocking the neck of the bottle several times until it finally came free. He handed it over proudly. Men loved that sort of thing, she knew: stepping in and doing things women couldn’t finish. She licked her lips, turned the cap, and heard the tear of paper. She spun the plastic cap until it toppled off and onto the floor. Like a stripper’s last article of clothing, Isabella thought, raising the bottle and taking a hefty swallow.

  Aaron removed a small package and a tiny spoon from his front pocket.

  “Cute,” said Isabella, pointing to the spoon. She took another drink, wiped her hot, numb mouth with the back of her hand, and hoped he would not ask for the bottle. He did eventually, though he barely put his lips to it, handed it back, then bent over and dipped the tiny silver spoon into a pile of powder. Carefully he lifted the spoon, positioned it at the base of his nostril, and inhaled hard. Like he had a bad cold.

  He offered Isabella the spoon.

  “What happens?” she asked, turning over some of the powder with the tiny utensil.

  “You’ll feel really awake,” he said.

  “I’m always really awake.”

  Aaron shrugged and took the spoon from her, dug another mound, and sucked it into his nostril. His eyes glittered. He ran his finger along the hard wall of his gums. Isabella took another swig of vodka, exchanged the spoon for the bottle, and sucked in the powder. Her brain was suddenly flooded with sunlight.

  Too quickly they finished the cocaine, depleted the vodka. Aaron stuck out his finger and put it under Isabella’s top lip, pressed her tingling gums. He pulled her body close to his, pressed against her, and covered her mouth with his own. He was so eager, so fast, and the world seemed numb and far away. Still she liked the smell of him, the softness of his lips against her unfeeling skin. She was wet between her legs. He undressed her, undressed himself. She lay back on the daybed and thought that finally she was doing something women were expected to do. Finally she was not in a white room or an attic. She was not at a party full of strangers. Finally, ow (he apologized), she was staring up into a face that gave her pleasure.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Francesca sat in the pizzeria chatting with Sherry, describing the previous evening’s excesses: plates of neatly cut lines of cocaine passed around the table, boys fucking in the coat room, Shanta taking so many quaaludes, Francesca had had no choice but to send her home with some sturdy, very willing Butch (“with a capital B,” Francesca said, realizing in the moment, that Sherry also fit that description) who actually knew how to drive a car. “I gotta learn to drive,” she said ruefully.

  Sherry nodded in agreement.

  Just then, Charlotte Wallace pulled back the restaurant door and stepped inside, flustered and excited. Sherry took one look at her, exhaled a long, disgusted sigh, and escaped to the back of the room. Charlotte opened her eyes wide. “What,” she said to Francesca. “What did I do?”

  Francesca shrugged, feeling her worlds collide.

  “You know,” Charlotte said, scooting into the booth and facing Francesca, “I don’t care what sort of upbringing a person has had or not had, there is no excuse for rudeness. Why can’t she just let bygones be bygones?”

  Francesca shrugged. “Charlotte, please. I don’t want to get involved.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But, if it hadn’t been for me, they would have shut this place down. Does she realize that?”

  “I said,” she tightened her jaw and spoke through gritted teeth, “I don’t want to be involved.”

  Charlotte waved her hand in the air and zipped her lip. She closed her eyes a moment, trying to forget the whole thing. What did it matter what some white trash pizza restaurant proprietor who looked like a car mechanic thought about her? Perhaps, in a perfect world, they would be friends. They were neighbors, after all. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with her neighbor? What kind of nut case didn’t at least try to be friends with her neighbor?

  “The fact is,” Charlotte said calmly, “there were rats in the dumpster. And something had to be done.” She shrugged. “She needs to just get over it.”

  “What’s that?” asked Francesca, pointing to an envelope in Charlotte’s hand. “Mail for me?”

  “I saw you in the window,” said Charlotte. “It’s from New Haven.”

  Francesca snatched the envelope and examined the postmark. She tore it open and read the contents aloud. It was from someone named Suzy Bishop, a young art collector who, judging from her poor syntax and punctuation non grata, spoke English as a third or fourth language, at best. It was composed on an old electric typewriter, not even the likes of a Selectric, and (with some difficulty) expressed the collector’s desire “to see the paintings of the artist and I am considering to buy one about chinese girl.”

  “Look how well she spells,” Francesca pointed, subjecting the letter to rare scrutiny. The New Haven postmark intrigued her, and Sunday’s Register had featured Francesca in its article about up-and-coming artists in the Northeast. She brought the envelope back to the cabin, placed it on the wire spool table in the center of the room, and turned it over to examine the postmark, then again to look at the printed address: Francesca DeSilva. With a capital D. What if someone from her past had found her? What if they’d been looking—all this time? Perhaps her photograph had been on milk cartons all these years, hanging on bulletin boards at bakeries, hair salons, grocery stores. Have you seen this girl? Last seen May 11, 1981. Naked. In bed with another girl.

  She stared at the canvases lining the walls of her cabin, the table scarred with lumps of paint, strewn rags, all of it, to her, as beautiful as the stains on her fingertips, the greasy taste of oil paint when she accidentally put a finger in her mouth while she was working, maybe to move something from behind a tooth. And all of it, suddenly, ephemeral. The life she’d been enjoying as she’d never enjoyed life before, might be taken from her in one small gesture. The arrival of her mother might accomplish it; or she might be brought down by a shadowy figure from her past—someone determined to expose her for what she was: a witless, defenseless excuse for a human being, postu
ring as someone extraordinary.

  Though Francesca had never discussed her past with Charlotte, it hadn’t been terribly difficult for Charlotte to put together a rudimentary outline based on spartan facts: Obviously, there had been an unhappy childhood; a Chinese girl of misguided importance. Something with the sister, some sort of rivalry, the intense sort that makes the loser, in this case Francesca, retreat to the corner like a wounded animal. Enough neglect or bad will to seed the damage more deeply, to send Francesca spinning through life wrestling the core belief that she deserved nothing more than a moldy shed by the train tracks. It broke Charlotte’s heart. Charlotte had no children of her own, but if she were to have one, Francesca would be the daughter she’d construct for herself—brilliant, subtly beautiful, kinder than she wanted anyone to know, and desperately in need of love, so desperately in need, Charlotte had decided, that Francesca could tolerate love only when she didn’t see it coming, when it wormed its way into her world undetected, like a fragrance slips in from outdoors and sweetens the air. Anyhow, Charlotte told herself, Francesca’s reticence only contributed to her mystique and, thus, her marketability. Her paintings oozed with all she would not say.

  While Shanta was lovely and darling (a little like a zaftig, Indian Julie Christie, Charlotte would say when describing her), any layman could tell Francesca was not in love. Still, Shanta’s adoration seemed to make Francesca happy, and Charlotte very much wanted Francesca to be happy. And there was an unuttered benefit to the prosaic nature of the relationship between Francesca and Shanta: it allowed Francesca to keep painting.

  Charlotte had a hunch about Suzy Bishop. The uncooperative collector could manage lunch only on May 10, Francesca’s birthday, so Charlotte apologized to Francesca but went ahead and scheduled the appointment. Francesca assured her it was fine, a good thing in a way since it would distract her from that perennial marker, one she usually defended against by disappearing into the darkness of back-to-back movies or long, shin-splitting walks on the beach.