by Hilary Sloin
Half-reclining, the subject rests on her soft, naked hip, her weight supported by an outstretched arm at the end of which her strong hand spreads like a crest. Each digit is long, separated, concluding in a clear, pearly fingernail. Her face is generic, as if it is not quite recalled, and she is naked but for her shirt, her legs curled beneath her. The strong line of her quadriceps is painstakingly depicted. A glimpse of her feet is provided, it seems by accident, the toe-nails painted a radiant orange. Cynthia Bell notes that this tiny detail rescues the painting from “utter innocuousness. It is a mark of lust, an embellishment that depraves the subject just enough to make her compelling.”86
While the torment that marks deSilva’s body of work is conspicuously absent from This is How She Looked in the Morning, deconstructionists seem allergic to the notion that the artist might have felt, albeit briefly, lighthearted and hopeful, not to mention altered by her unusual circumstances. Lucinda Dialo exhorts, in an editorial in ArtNews, “It’s absurd [for Jones and Particip] to attribute the final work of one of our greatest painters to her mentally ill older sister, who, as far we know, had never so much as dabbled in the visual arts! It infuriates me, frankly, that scholars have given this cockamamie theory consideration enough to bother debating its merits. What psychologists fail to recognize, and what psychologists have never understood about art, it seems, is that art is mystery. It descends from somewhere uncharted and it surprises even its creator. Thus tenderness can emerge from a hardened soul, happiness from a wretch. And there is no psychological basis for this anomaly; its only reason is art.”87
Argues Bell, “The temptation to attribute this painting to Isabella DeSilva is the result of rampant cultural homophobia. The artistic and psychological community can’t accept that this relationally impaired artist might have experienced, however fleetingly, a higher love, one that transcended the insufficient and superficial liaisons attributed to lesbians and homosexuals. Hasn’t history shown that mature love alters one’s view of the world? The need to eliminate the possibility that love softened deSilva’s vision is the need to deny the viability of lesbianism.”88
Though one can easily find the mark of deSilva’s artistry in This is How She Looked in the Morning Jones and Particip do raise intriguing questions. They point out, for example, that the painting is haphazardly executed, as though the artist were rushing89 (perhaps, the psychologists suggest, Isabella was hurrying to finish the painting before her younger sister returned from the neighbor’s house and caught her mucking with the art supplies). Why, they ask, would Francesca deSilva paint a nude portrait of the next-door neighbor, whom she hardly knew? Further, when did she have the opportunity to view LeeAnn Frank in the morning? Naked!
Any of these irregularities can be reasonably dismissed—and have. Only one small detail of physical evidence is difficult to discount: A small spiral pad was found near the painting, atop Alfonse’s old lawnmower. On the first page of this tiny tablet is scrawled the title of the painting. It is impossible to dismiss that Isabella, known to do her writing on these miniature pads and perpetually obsessed with the beautiful neighbor, is a plausible source of this artifact. Experts who have analyzed the piece of paper report it could have been the work of either sister, so alike was their handwriting.
One final note: While only a naif could characterize the life of Francesca deSilva as happy, or find in this story a cheerful ending, it is, perhaps, small comfort to consider that on the night of the fire, the members of the DeSilva family seemed, for the first time, at peace with one another. It is therefore odd that the academy persists in its cynicism, its need to steal from deSilva’s legacy a ray of hope, and in so doing to rob the public of the heartening notion that exceptional talent and inspiration can thrive even after an artist’s torment and suffering have abated.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The funeral was brief, held under gray skies with ashy clouds blowing past. The coffin was propped on three green canvas strips that were attached to a metal structure, the entire contraption floating over a cavernous, symmetrical hole. The family stood bunched together like shrubs, several feet from the hole, on the blanket of synthetic grass the funeral home had unfurled. Alfonse turned away to stop himself from imagining, in gory detail, poor Evelyn crashing into the deep cavern and spilling forth from her tidy coffin. He hated funerals. And the idea that his mother-in-law, who had always seemed so sensible, would choose burial instead of cremation confounded him. Vivian had explained—repeatedly—that Jewish people did not believe in cremation. Still, the dirt thrown on top, the bugs, all of it, seemed horribly slow and torturous. Perhaps, he thought, it is because I am a gardener. Because I know the unceasing activity below the ground, how the roots from nearby trees strangle everything in sight.
“Mama would have liked how nice everything looks,” he whispered to Vivian, trying to chase away his misery.
“I wish it didn’t remind me of a putting green,” Vivian wrapped her gloved hand around his bare one for a moment, then took it away.
Birds cawed, landed atop nearby monuments, flapping their wings and spanning the crowd with paranoid button eyes. The rabbi seemed to be rushing, as though he were late for an appointment across town. He recited Evelyn’s good deeds like a grocery list: dance lessons at the synagogue; raised money for Hadassah; volunteered at the Jewish Home; took care of her ailing husband, may he rest in peace. Everyone breathed formless puffs of steam, rubbed their hands together and pattered their feet in place on the frozen ground.
After the service, Vivian lit a cigarette. The rabbi helped her into the Nissan. Alfonse adroitly occupied the driver’s seat. He felt like a man. The daughters he had sired were in the backseat. Even if they weren’t fair and bewitching as every man hopes his daughters will be, still, there they were, pressed against opposite windows. And though Evelyn was dead, though he and Vivian were not happy and hadn’t been for as long as he could remember, though Isabella was crazy, and though he hadn’t yet managed to engage in conversation of any import with his estranged daughter, still he felt almost giddy, as if it were a Thursday night in June fifteen years ago, the air cool, the sky light, and they were on their way to Evelyn’s for brisket.
He waved with masculine efficacy to the funeral director, proceeded through the cemetery, and led the procession out onto the street.
“Brr . . .” Vivian rubbed her upper arms. “Is there a window open?”
“Yes,” Isabella muttered, “But if I close it, we’ll all die of smoke inhalation.” Her mood was fouled by the amount of attention paid her sister at the funeral. Particularly by Joycie Newman, usually Isabella’s biggest fan, who had virtually ignored her, the whole time fawning over Francesca. One flick of the wrist, a disingenuous wave before the service began, was all Joycie had spared for Isabella; she’d been too busy flirting with her sister. And, of course, Isabella had hoped to see Aaron, just so she could muster all her willpower and snub him. He was engaged to be married, she’d heard, and she wanted to smile and congratulate him, as if no news had ever mattered less.
“How come Aaron wasn’t there?” she inquired calmly.
“Who’s Aaron?” asked Francesca.
Vivian sprinted to a new subject: “Did everyone see the obituary?” She removed a small square of paper from her wallet and unfolded it carefully. Isabella ardently reached out her hand, but Vivian handed it to Francesca. “Francesca, honey, read it out loud, would you?” she said.
“Isabella, you read it,” said Francesca.
“Yes, thank you.” Isabella took the piece of paper, pleased that her sister had happened upon the correct solution. She cleared her throat: “Evelyn Rose Horowitz, 76, beloved wife of Yitzchak Horowitz (deceased). Mother of Vivian Horowitz DeSilva, New Haven. We will miss her spicy conversations and peppered opinions. Send contributions to United Alzheimer’s Foundation or the Jewish Home for the Aged.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Vivian wrinkled up her face.
“Nothing!” Alfonse p
atted the carpeted hump between them.
“Francesca?” she flapped down the sun visor and studied her younger daughter in the compact mirror.
Isabella folded the obituary and handed it over the top of the seat to her mother. “I know what’s wrong with it,” she said cryptically.
“There is nothing wrong with it,” said Alfonse.
“What’s with peppered and spicy in the same paragraph?” Isabella asked.
“I like that,” he stated passionately. “It made me think of Grandma’s cooking.”
“Exactly!” Vivian pointed her finger emphatically at his cheek, then pushed in the cigarette lighter and searched for a Merit Ultra Light 100, her new brand.
“Since when did Grandma cook anything peppered and spicy? Fatty and overdone would be more like it. We’ll miss her fatty conversations and overdone opinions.” Isabella grinned at her sister, pleased with her own wit.
But Francesca paid no attention. She was preoccupied with when to leave and how to minimize the moment’s significance. How to get the paintings back into the car without causing a stir, without igniting sudden interest (though there was little chance of that; why, she allowed herself to wonder, had she brought all the fucking paintings in the first place?); and how to turn the paintings over to the curator while engaging in as little chit chat as possible. Plus, there was Bunyan to finish and Reality Has Intruded Here.
“Tomorrow, I have to go home,” she said.
“Tomorrow?” Isabella cried. “But why?”
Vivian turned back and smiled, her head cocked to the side. “We understand, honey,” she said. “Your sister has a very busy life.”
Now Francesca wanted only to arrive at the house, unfold into the cold air, steal a few moments of solitude. Just five minutes without a tactless, unanswerable question (Where did you learn to paint like that? Do you know how much your grandmother loved you? Judy Garland used to dress like a man, too, and she was considered very modern, very stylish). Five minutes without someone braying about her surprise existence. They all stared at her as if she were a statue come to life. And then there were the thoughts of Lisa. Deep in her body, something throbbed each time she thought of Lisa, a little piece of death she carried with her, the suggestion that her own demise might not be so far off in the future. Though Francesca did not believe in life after death, the possibility that she and Lisa might meet again—as vaporous souls, trees, minerals, whatever—brought her comfort.
She half wished she could bring Isabella with her, set her up in the cottage behind Charlotte’s house. Perhaps she’d be preventing a second suicide.
Vivian watched as Francesca stepped behind the house to smoke a cigarette.
Alfonse was silent. He pulled the keys from the ignition and lifted his left hand from the steering wheel, shifted it toward the door handle, everything slow like syrup.
“I feel like she just got here,” he said as he unfolded from the car.
“She did,” replied Isabella. “And now she’s leaving.”
“She’ll be back,” said Vivian.
“Duh! No, she won’t,” Isabella cried out.
“Isabella, what did I tell you about that word?”
“Sorry.”
“That can’t be true! Why is that?” asked Alfonse, at once devastated.
“Look at us! Then look at her!” Isabella said. She climbed out of the car and stormed into the house. “Would you come back if you were her?”
“Are we so terrible?” Alfonse looked down at his inexpensive overcoat, his black Oxfords. He knew there was truth in what Isabella said but couldn’t bear the idea of it, that there was something inherently flawed—even bizarre—in him, and that Francesca had seen it—maybe not then, when she’d run away, but now, having returned as an adult. Hadn’t he intended better things for himself? A better marriage? Happier children? More fulfilling work? How had he allowed himself to become so misguided and disconsolate? When had all notions of improving slid into the mist?
Against the kitchen wall, a giant hefty bag was filled with paper plates and plastic utensils. Ashtrays had been emptied; vast quantities of liquor, purchased for the week-long observance, were hidden up high so as not to tempt Isabella and risk another embarrassing episode. The kitchen counters were laden with tinfoil-covered Pyrex dishes, warm and heavy with kugels, brisket, pickled tongue.
When will these Jews catch up with the times? thought Vivian, surveying the mess. Maybe if they ate some fruit and vegetables instead of so much beef and fat, they wouldn’t all die of heart attacks, as her father had and, most likely, her mother as well. Thank goodness the neighbor had brought something healthy—though a little too unusual for a Jewish Shiva, Vivian thought—some sort of Moroccan salad made of wheat and tomatoes and parsley.
Finally, Vivian sent off the last of the mahjong ladies, submitting to their thick, lipstick kisses. The neighbor left, too.
She brought the trash outside and glanced back at her house from the vantage point of the freestanding garage. At last, her home seemed blissfully motionless. The yellow lamps in the living room were lit. Everything looked warm and normal. She returned to the kitchen and glanced around approvingly. Joycie Newman was rinsing the last of the dishes.
“I don’t know what I would have done without you, Joycie,” she pretended to rest her head on Joycie’s shoulder. “I would have been cleaning for days.”
“Oy vay,” said Joycie, feeling Jewish. She finished rinsing the dishes, turned off the faucet, and entered the living room, drying her hands on a dishtowel. She pulled a fold-up chair over to the couch and sat down near Francesca. Their knees bumped. “Thank God they’re all gone,” she said, exempting herself. “Is it strange to be back here?”
Francesca shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
“It’s so provincial, isn’t it? So small-town,” Joycie rolled her eyes. “I often wish I’d left New Haven for a bigger city. New York, say, or Chicago.”
“Well, compared to Provincetown, this might as well be New York or Chicago.”
Joycie laughed and squeezed Francesca’s knee.
Francesca glanced at Joycie’s manicured hand resting on her knee. It remained there for several moments until Francesca feigned an itch and uncrossed her legs, then shifted her body out of Joycie’s reach.
She remembered her brief conversation with LeeAnn Frank outside, over a cigarette. LeeAnn rolled her own cigarettes, carried a blue plastic pouch stuffed with moist gold tobacco. She’d made a cigarette for Francesca just like that, standing there, fingers frozen, had licked it from both sides into a perfect cylinder.
Alfonse retrieved Joycie’s snazzy nubuck coat from the front hall closet. He helped her on with it, patted the puffy shoulders. “Warm,” he said cheerfully. She promised to return first thing the following morning.
Vivian closed the door behind Joycie and mock-barricaded it with her body. Half drunk, she weaved through the living room and collapsed into the armchair. She extended her legs and clutched a heavy, glass ashtray with her stockinged toes, dragged it in this manner along the surface of the coffee table until it was close enough that she could reach it with her fingers. “This was your grandmother’s ashtray,” she nodded sadly at the ugly piece, as if it were Evelyn herself flattened on the table. “She loved this ashtray. And she loved you, Francesca. Remember that.”
“What about me?” asked Isabella.
“Of course she loved you. But everything isn’t about you, Bella.” Vivian lit a cigarette, exhaled luxuriously, and tossed her head back, molded her neck into the soft back of the chair, and stared at the water-stained ceiling.
The headlights on Joycie’s Lexus smoothed across the living room wall. Vivian sat up and looked first at Alfonse, then Francesca, then Isabella. “I don’t think Grandma would mind if I said . . .” she hesitated, “that I feel happy. Because everyone is here.” Her face twisted up with an expression that made everyone uncomfortable—it was so anguished and involuntary—and her eyes filled with shiny tears.
“You know,” she said, “I think your grandmother only pretended to hate me.”
“Of course she did,” Alfonse put his hands on her shoulders from behind.
“Maybe that’s what she did with me too,” said Isabella.
“I’m sure it is!” Alfonse exclaimed. “Your grandmother was a funny lady. She didn’t like to show her feelings. Like your mother. And your sister.” He groaned and stretched his body as high as he could manage, striving to tap the light fixture as he did each night on his way upstairs—a quick way to chase the kinks from his back. He was pleased with himself for his astute observation, particularly where Francesca was concerned. “I’m going to tinker with that furnace a while. See if I can get it to stop making that sound,” he said with authority.
“What sound?” asked Isabella.
“That terrible, high-pitched sound.” Vivian made a face, as if she were being subjected to it at that very moment.
“What high-pitched sound?” Isabella persisted.
“I heard something,” offered Francesca. “But it was more of a knocking. Then again, I sleep next to a train track, so . . .” She shrugged.
“A train track?” Alfonse asked. “Where is it?”
“Right outside my cabin. Ten yards away,” Francesca boasted.
“Oh boy,” he sighed. “She’s had a wild life, your sister.” He looked at Isabella and raised his eyebrows. Then he left the room. The door to the basement squeaked open. This, too, he wanted to fix, the squeak, but it would have to wait. He took his old metal toolbox down from a shelf he’d built into the back of the stairs, and descended into the basement.
Vivian stood up, suddenly exuberant. “I’m going to make cookies! Who wants to help me make cookies?”
Isabella raised her hand.
“Francesca?” Vivian asked. “How ’bout making some cookies with your old Mom?”
“I’d love to,” said Francesca, picking out the green M&Ms from a mixed assortment and dropping them one at a time into her mouth. “But I’m going to visit the neighbor. She’s going to play the piano for me. She plays Chopin, and I love Chopin.” She shrugged casually, slid her pack of cigarettes into her jacket pocket, and kissed Vivian, then Isabella on the cheek. Vivian wondered whether she’d even recognize Chopin. Could she discern him from Bach or Beethoven, or even Liberace for that matter?