by Hilary Sloin
What would be the point of art if all it required for its appreciation were a catalog of illicit facts? Imagine if, upon visiting a museum, we were handed such a pamphlet, detailing not where the artist trained and with whom, his influences and colleagues, the various evolutions of his work, but instead with whom he slept, whether or not he cheated on his wife and molested his children, his various mental maladies, concluding, perhaps, with some chatty anecdote about the time he slept it off on the village green, or a neighbor’s account of how his father beat him nightly with a two-by-four.”80
At first glance, Study of White Figure in Window is almost commonplace in its subject: A ghostly, faceless woman is huddled beside a tiny attic window. Her rounded shoulders abut the sloped wall behind her. She is faded and blurred as cotton washed a hundred times, and stares wistfully out the window and down at something unseen but clearly important. Covering her form, bumpy as a rock buried in riverside soil, a thick white robe gathers in folds. The belt is unknotted, hangs down with defeat; its edges graze the dirty wooden floor. Rainy light, the color of watered-down wine, shades her face, shrouds uncertain cheekbones and a blunted chin. A wilted wasp nest of hair balances precariously and heavily on her head, as if it were something she could not shake (representing, perhaps, the constraints of femininity). The strands are faded, the ends ragged as tinsel. She is enervated, resigned; she no longer resists or pursues anything. She appears atrophied, frozen in the same position for an eternity.
It has been speculated that the subject is a prisoner, a madwoman in the attic, someone’s crazy aunt, even Charlotte Perkins Gilman (an author both Isabella and Francesca admired). Whoever she is, she seems suspended between life and death, her eyelids barely open, her mouth parted just enough to permit entry to only the slimmest sheathes of air.
This quietly devastating work asks many questions and answers none. The prevailing interpretation is that Study of White Figure in Window is a portrait of de-Silva’s estranged sister, Isabella: The white bathrobe, the positioning of the subject voyeuristically peering out the window, the despondent posture all support this theory. Still the same details could as easily position Study of White Figure in Window as a self-portrait. Lucinda Dialo writes extensively about Study of White Figure in Window in Women Paint!:
“The artist’s treatment of her gentle painting is tremendously significant. deSilva banished the painting to a dark and dusty fate. This act serves as a metaphor upon a metaphor. The exile of the painting furthers its meaning: that of a woman locked away because she is inferior, a woman who cannot confront the harsh censure and ostracism of an insensitive society. The painting, analogously, reveals too much about its artist, makes her vulnerable and, it might be said, occasions its banishment to a space under the bed where it can be both protected from public scrutiny and prevented from bringing shame upon its creator.
“The feminist content of Study of White Figure in Window cannot be overstated. The subject is not Isabella or Charlotte Perkins Gilman or Jane Eyre, nor is it Francesca deSilva herself: it is Every-woman. Everywoman who could not assimilate, could not marry and push the stroller down the cheery street, who prefers a life of isolation to the untenable pain of exposure. deSilva hid the painting away to protect herself, sensing, and with eerie accuracy, that the public would not appreciate a simple, sad portrait of a woman.”81
Hamil’s rant against junk addiction notwithstanding, it is difficult, if not impossible, to turn a blind eye toward the odd parallels between the subject of Study of White Figure in Window and each of the D/deSilva sisters.
Psychiatrists May Jones and Ann Particip claim, even insist that Study of White Figure in Window gives credence to their hypothesis of the “inexplicable connectedness among siblings. Evident in this painting,” the scientists posit, “is the seamless merging of personae. The figure, dressed in the white robe and peering out the window—much as Isabella might have done in Francesca’s memory—is situated in the attic, Francesca’s childhood room. Even more uncanny is that during the time deSilva worked on Study of White Figure in Window, her family of origin, with whom she’d had no contact for eight years, was in upheaval: Isabella was institutionalized, Alfonse and Vivian separated for a time, and Evelyn was suffering the onset of a devastating illness. How do we explain this synchronicity in the face of prolonged separation and emotional distance, if not through a genetic connectedness, one impervious to external circumstances?”82
Chapter Eighteen
“This is one of those things someone should have taught you a long time ago,” Lisa said, pulling her car up alongside the pay phone and climbing out. “Scoot over.”
Francesca shook her head.
“Francesca, come on. You need to be able to drive. What, are you going to ride a bicycle to your show in New Haven?”
“I’m not going to go to my show in New Haven.” She crossed her arms.
“It’s very easy.” Lisa tapped on the window and motioned, once again, for Francesca to shift over into the driver’s seat. She opened the door and took from Francesca the two large coffees, assumed custody of the grease-stained bag of oversized blueberry muffins. “Move over,” she said, calmly.
Francesca obeyed, then sat stiff in the driver’s seat, waiting for further instruction. She put her hands on the wheel and felt the old car rattle under her fingers. “Don’t make me do this,” she said.
“You love when I make you do things.”
“Yeah. Not this.”
“Move the seat back. Go on.” Lisa bent over and pulled back on the lever attached to the driver’s seat; gently she pushed the seat backward. “Ready?” she asked. Without waiting for Francesca’s reply, she shifted the car into drive. Slowly, it began to drift. “Just steer, and when you’re ready to go faster, step on the gas. Gently.”
“Do you know how many women have tried to get me to drive?” asked Francesca.
Lisa shook her head. “How many?”
“At least three. My grandmother. Charlotte. This friend of mine. And you. Four. And you’re the only one who has succeeded.” Francesca grabbed the wheel and let the car putter along the side street, eventually accelerating to 30 mph, hugging the side of the road, panicked each time a car neared on the opposite side of the street.
“How’s it feel?”
“I hate it,” said Francesca. “It feels unnatural.”
“Of course it does. It takes time.”
Francesca shook her head, disbelieving.
“Pull onto Route 6. Go on,” Lisa said.
Francesca clutched the wheel with both hands as she sped up and pulled onto the highway. For a quick moment she removed her right hand from the wheel to adjust the rearview mirror, which she checked repeatedly as she crawled along in the right lane.
“You have to go faster,” said Lisa. “The speed limit is 45. You need to go at least 35.” She put her hand on Francesca’s knee, for comfort.
Francesca reached 35, then 42 before pulling off at the first rest area and parking—roughly—beneath the spattered shade of a pine tree. “Man,” she sighed and pushed in the cigarette lighter.
“It doesn’t work,” Lisa said, finding an old book of matches on the floor. “I hate this car.”
“I’ll get you a new one.”
“I hate my life,” Lisa said. “Would you get me a new one?” She removed a bent joint from her shirt pocket.
“You should play chess again,” Francesca said. “Maybe by denying yourself chess, you are sabotaging your happiness.”
“That’s very American,” Lisa said, “But not at all Chinese. We don’t worry about happiness.”
“But you are American.”
Lisa shrugged. “In this way, I am Chinese.”
“So you’re never going to play again?”
“I play. I teach these old guys where my father goes during the day. I play with them. I just don’t want to compete.”
“Since when?”
Lisa hesitated. “I don’t want to tell you this. I
’ve never told anyone this.”
“Tell me.”
She took a long hit of the joint, exhaled, then waited for the pot to alter her mood. Even a little. “I haven’t wanted to play since I lost to this kid a few years ago.”
“What kid?”
“This faggot kid in this gymnasium in Bridgeport. The game was on the twelfth floor in this decrepit factory building with only one malfunctioning elevator that stopped just a few feet above the floor, so you had to hop down. There were huge dusty windows all the way across the length of the gym, flooding the room in this steely, depressing city light. I told myself I was doing it for the money—there was a $3,000 prize—but it was more complicated than that. I needed to win. My ego needed a win.
“My father came and sat a few feet away and nodded his head every time I did something right—there weren’t too many instances of that. The rest of the time, he stared straight ahead. At nothing. Other than our being the only Chinese people there, you’d never guess we were related. Finally, I followed his gaze to see what the fuck he was looking at—” Here she traced the air with her finger, remembering. “All the way across the gymnasium. There was a sign that said: Return Basketballs to the Closet. That’s what he stared at. A fucking sign.”
“He’s a prick. He’s always been a prick.”
“Yeah. Right.” She took several hits of the joint, licked her forefinger and tidied up the rolling job. “So, I never think about my mother,” Lisa exhaled. “I don’t let myself think about her. Because what’s the point? But all of a sudden, in the middle of this high-stakes chess game, I could think of nothing else. And I started to cry. And I wanted to throw myself through the windows and over the side of the building. Like my mother. You want some more?” she asked, offering it to Francesca for the first time.
Francesca shook her head. “You know,” she said, “just because I live in that shack doesn’t mean I have to stay there. Charlotte built a beautiful cottage behind her house and she’s always after me to move in there.” This was as close as Francesca could come to what she wanted to say.
“That’s a nice offer.” Lisa put her hand on Francesca’s.
“You could move in there by yourself, I’ll bet.” This was a rare moment between them—no sex, no sarcasm. Genuine, almost innocent acknowledgement of love. Lisa nodded, as if watching it unfurl.
“That looks pretty,” she said. “But I’m not gay. I could never live a gay lifestyle. And look at you. You are so gay.” She laughed a sharp—and once again sarcastic—laugh.
Francesca looked down at herself, as if Lisa had given her an instruction. She wore worn carpenter’s pants and clogs. What was so gay about clogs? “I’m wearing clogs,” she said. “Don’t you ever wear clogs?”
“I don’t happen to like clogs.”
“But they’re not gay. Lots of people who wear clogs aren’t gay.”
“It’s just what you are,” said Lisa. “It’s the way you carry yourself, and the look on your face—silent and separate from the regular world. And your giant hands. And your paintings. They’re so gigantic and audacious. Straight women don’t paint like that. You’re going to be so famous.” Lisa stubbed out the joint, licked her thumb and forefinger, and squeezed the tip of the roach, then dropped it into a film canister she kept in her pocket. “Drive.”
“You drive.”
Lisa shook her head. “We can sit a few more minutes while you tell me about your girlfriend.”
“No.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Yes.”
“Is she smart?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love her?”
“No. She’s just someone to be with. You can’t be alone all the time.”
Lisa nodded. This was a good answer. Of course Francesca couldn’t spend her entire life alone. In a way, the knowledge that Francesca was cared for by others was a relief. Lisa knew she couldn’t stay; she recognized her limitations. She had to get back to her father. With each day she was away, there would be more anger to deflect, more humiliation, more tasks he’d have saved up for her return: dirty laundry, plates and bowls with lichens of food along the edges, ashtrays to empty. He would grill her as he always did when she stayed away overnight, and she would lie. Chess tournament, she would tell him (she’d already rehearsed it, practiced sternly sticking to her story in spite of his leery expression). But just the idea of it exhausted her.
They switched seats. Lisa turned the key in the ignition, but the car wouldn’t start.
“Oh God. What did I do?” Francesca asked.
“You didn’t do anything. I’m surprised this piece of shit even got me this far. It should have died a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve changed the oil in about ten years.”
“You haven’t been driving for ten years,” said Francesca, climbing out of the car and sticking out her thumb. Lisa lit a cigarette and waited in the driver’s seat. She was worried this would delay her departure and relieved, too, knowing she’d have at least another night with Francesca, maybe several. The longer she stayed away from Mr. Sinsong, the less real he became. Whatever dreariness awaited her couldn’t multiply infinitely; after a while, they’d have to plateau. He’d have to tire of hating her and be glad she’d returned. Perhaps if she stayed away longer, he’d appreciate that she’d come back. And if not, she could always run out again, hop a train out of New Haven, back to Francesca. Maybe she’d do that anyhow. She sighed, crossed her foot over her knee, pulling at some loose white threads hanging from the hem of her jeans, and glanced at Francesca through the cloudy windshield, certain that she was the most beautiful creature walking the planet.
The mechanic confirmed what Lisa had said. It was a miracle, he told them, the car had run this long. He said it wasn’t worth fixing, and anyhow, he wouldn’t even have a chance to look at it until the end of the week.
“But I can’t wait that long,” Lisa said. She turned to Francesca. “My father’s going to kill me.”
“Your father’s going to kill you?” Francesca repeated, certain that Lisa, in her infinite intelligence, would hear how ridiculous the statement sounded. But Lisa only nodded.
“I have to take him to the club. He plays poker on Thursday night.”
“So he’ll take a bus,” Francesca said.
Lisa shook her head. “I have to get back there.”
Francesca felt like she’d bitten into some intoxicating confection that she could not stop eating. She ate and ate of it, long past the point of sickness, caring about nothing except making it last as long as it could. Even after all these years, Lisa still stirred a longing that was pure and lethal. Longing for what? Francesca didn’t even know. She still imagined they would get away—but from what? They would go somewhere—but where? Someplace different, where their circumstances would be erased and they could grow up again, into the people they might have become, had they been able to evolve, unhampered. She looked at Lisa now, Lisa gone, at her pale skin and tinged eyeballs, her thin, abandoned body. She did not feel lust. She wanted to protect Lisa. The idea of bad things happening to Lisa—as surely they had—was too much to bear. She would kill—even then, in that moment—anyone who harmed her Lisa. She would kill Mr. Sinsong with her big, paint-stained hands. Look, she wanted to say, holding her wide palms in the air, look what I’d do for you.
The mechanic assured Francesca that the engine would have seized up whether or not she’d driven it. Probably, Lisa teased, Francesca had driven too slowly, and the car became confused and disoriented and, finally, convinced all hope was lost, just died.
“It’s true that some of these old cars like having one driver,” said the mechanic, unwittingly worsening Francesca’s guilt. As far as driving it back to Connecticut, he said it was not an option. Besides the fact that the engine appeared to have seized, the tires were all bald, the radiator was leaking, and the exhaust system was entirely rusted out, barely attached to the bottom of the car. He suggested public transportation or a rental
.
“I can’t afford a rental,” Lisa whispered. “I’ll take a bus.”
Though Francesca did not want Lisa to leave—ever—she knew she could not keep her there. Thus, that night, after Lisa had gone to sleep, she wrapped The Trilogy, with which she’d been unable to part in spite of popular demand and Charlotte’s urging, as if Francesca had known this day might come, in brown paper and let it lean against the wall of the cabin. She sat in a lawn chair and smoked nearly a pack of cigarettes, her throat rough as cut metal by the time morning softened the sky. When Lisa woke, the coffee was made. Francesca used the pay phone to call and book Lisa a seat on a small plane leaving the Provincetown airport. She presented the paintings, explaining that if Charlotte were at all savvy in these matters, they’d be worth great money someday soon. In the meantime, she insisted on giving Lisa two thousand dollars to buy a used car. “I’d give you more, but I don’t have a lot of cash,” she said, counting out the bills, placing them, one at a time, onto Lisa’s outstretched hand.
The early morning mist muddled the roads, thick as cotton, thinning out across the runway—really just a lea with tall stripped reeds and dusty desert shrubs. Francesca handed the paintings to the pilot, then stood with her hands in her pockets while he helped Lisa climb up into the cacophonous vehicle. It would be good, Francesca thought, to run over, climb up into the cab, and plant one more kiss on her sweet morning mouth, savor the taste of separation. Instead, she removed the small box Lisa had given her for her birthday and tore off the red and yellow paper, which she stuffed into her pocket. Inside, seated on a pillow of cotton was a bottle cap, immediately familiar, still encrusted with dirt from the floor of her hut. It was from Mello Yello, rusted and dented, as the best bottle caps always are, and Francesca held it in her hand, as if it were the only evidence she’d ever seen of her life before this one.