The Art Student's War

by Brad Leithauser

  Yet when you looked at it closely, it was far more than a mere plaything. This was a little marvel. Stevie had put it together painstakingly, lovingly … He had fitted the knitting needle into a piece of wood carved and sanded into a handsome bell-shaped curve. He had outfitted it with gray feathers rimmed in ebony and silver—but where had he acquired such gorgeous feathers?

  Maybe he’d found a dead bird? Maybe they’d been supplied by Mr. Glovinsky, the butcher? The point was, this was Stevie’s handiwork, and Bea recognized, across an expanse vast enough to make anybody’s head spin, that her baby brother, little Stevie, knew it too: now and then, Ste-vie, too, felt a true artist’s hunger in his hands. Unmistakably, the boy had stared at this dart as intensely as Bea had ever stared at any of her soldier portraits, and at once Bea grasped how little she grasped about her nearest, her most intimate world. You live beside people—strangers. She was so caught up in her life, she couldn’t see her life, circumscribed as it was by that most inscrutable of mysteries—a family—where each of us understands everything and nothing at once. She looked still more closely at Stevie’s handiwork, and the sunlight dancing angelically on the needle’s head was a source of clarification all but blinding.

  Mrs. Olsson wasn’t someone to be fended off; another trip to the DIA was scheduled. It amused Bea to recall how she’d crammed at the library when last preparing to serve as Mrs. Olsson’s museum guide. There was no studying this time.

  The morning of the scheduled tour, Bea woke up feeling nauseated. If it weren’t for Henry, the sleepless sentinel on her desktop, she wasn’t sure she could have dragged herself from bed.

  After a bout of diarrhea, Bea examined her face more intently than usual in the bathroom mirror. She’d been aware of losing color these past few weeks—various people had gently pointed it out—but it came as a shock to see her face so thin and ghostly.

  And her clothes were beginning to fall off her.

  Hoping to disguise the true state of things, Bea put on a baggy black sweater and a baggy gray skirt, and she was more liberal than usual with the rouge, but of course Mrs. Olsson wasn’t fooled for an instant. She strolled magnificently across the great lobby of the Detroit Institute of Arts and seized Bea’s hands and declared at once, “Oh my poor dear Bianca. You’ve had such a time.” “Hello.” “Ronny told me about your friend. My poor dear child,” Mrs. Olsson said, “you’ve had such a time.”

  The DIA was—as Ronny rightly pointed out—the city’s most sacred site, and when previously guiding Mrs. Olsson, Bea had attempted a brief, reverent history of Italian painting. But most of her account had been cut short by Mrs. Olsson, who had hustled them off to lunch. Today, however, Mrs. Olsson wanted to linger—specifically, she wanted to volunteer evaluations. Especially of the portraits.

  Mrs. Olsson would have happily conceded that she knew nothing about art history, and yet in her judgments she was, characteristically, opinionated and imposing. They did not intimidate her, those elite faces looking down from the great walls. Leaning confidentially toward Bea, offering pointed little observations, Mrs. Olsson was like a woman at a fête, the belle of the ball, quietly appraising the other, less resplendent partygoers.

  Among the French paintings, Mrs. Olsson was particularly drawn toward a pretty aristocrat, a marquise, in a green velvet dress with generous décolletage. “It’s hard to say who admired her bosom more,” Mrs. Olsson said. “The painter or the lady herself.” Then her conversation took an even more indelicate turn, the sort of thing Mamma wouldn’t say in a hundred years: “Bianca, you ever ask yourself why God put them there—breasts?”

  Mrs. Olsson awaited an answer …

  “I don’t suppose,” Bea murmured.

  “D’you suppose He liked them Himself? Or was it just His way of turning the tables in a man’s world?” Mrs. Olsson laughed and Bea, after a moment, laughed with her.

  The two of them found their way to a Flemish painting of the Madonna with two children. Mrs. Olsson said, “No surprise this one’s anonymous. That little Christ child is plug-ugly, and the other kid’s the ugliest little boy I ever saw.”

  “That’s John the Baptist.”

  “I should have known,” Mrs. Olsson said. “No wonder they cut his head off.”

  After such an observation, Bea decided to sidestep Bellini’s Madonna and Child. It was perhaps her favorite painting in the museum, and Mrs. Olsson just might fail to appreciate it …

  French paintings, English paintings. And then—better yet—a Dutch room. “Ronny’s very fond of this one,” Bea said. It was a Claesz still life.

  “Isn’t it too dark?”

  “He admires the reflection of the window on the wineglass. It’s very subtle. The painting’s quite solid, but everything seems afloat.”

  “Yes …”

  And Mrs. Olsson, surprisingly, peered long and hard at the painting—as if determined to commune with her son here, within some smoky oak-paneled Dutch interior. Finally she said, “Where do you think Ronny gets it—his talent for art? From me, is it? Or from Mr. Olsson?”

  “Maybe both?”

  “It has to be me, dear, now doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? Bea, be candid with me. Suppose I lived to be a hundred. Well maybe, just maybe, I’d paint a painting one day. But let Charley live ten thousand years, he’d still paint no paintings. Can you see him in a little beret, doing a water-color of somebody’s poodle?”

  Bea laughed again—when was the last time she’d laughed like this? “Mr. Olsson in a little beret? No.”

  “And now it’s time for lunch. You are going to let me take you to lunch? We’ll go to Pierre’s. Have you been to Pierre’s?”

  The question took Bea aback. It remained among the most memorable meals in her life—that remarkable afternoon when Mrs. Olsson had taken her to Pierre’s.

  “It’s where we went after our last visit here,” Bea said gently.

  Not even a tad embarrassed, Mrs. Olsson replied, “Silly me. ’course it is.”

  So they returned to Pierre’s, that dark, cozy, amazingly costly restaurant tucked away off Jefferson not far from the Windsor Tunnel. Once again, the dapper owner, Monsieur Pierre, all but fell over himself at seeing Mrs. Olsson, who again introduced Bea with a flamboyantly elongated enunciation—Bi-an-ca Pa-ra-di-so. And once again Pierre lifted Bea’s hand near enough to his mouth that, although he didn’t actually kiss it, she could feel his rapturous breathing.

  In low, earnest tones Mrs. Olsson consulted with Pierre, who led them to a table different from their previous table. This one, fitted into a corner, was less in the public eye. But the beautiful salmon-colored napkins and tablecloth were exactly the shade Bea remembered. A plump maize-colored candle threw an opulent glow over their table.

  It seemed this time there were to be no menus, for scarcely had the two of them been seated when a glass of red wine appeared before Bea, and a clear icy drink before Mrs. Olsson, along with a basket of rolls and a bowl of olives.

  Bea sipped her wine, and took another sip.

  “You haven’t been eating,” Mrs. Olsson told her. “I want you to have a roll.”

  Warily, slowly, Bea selected a roll. Lately, she hadn’t done too well when somebody—usually Mamma or Papa—exhorted her to eat. Urgings of this sort turned everything to dust in her mouth.

  “With butter.”

  Bea nodded obediently and, more slowly still, buttered the roll, which was warm.

  She took a small bite and—and the little roll’s condensed flavor opened and ramified on her palate. Its buttery goldenness filled her mouth. She’d never tasted anything so delicious. The roll, resting in her hand, was a thing of subtle textures, and she could feel it calling to her, asking to be eaten. Bea took another bite, and another bite.

  “And I want you to drink more of your wine. When was the last time you relaxed, darling?”

  The wine, too, spoke invitingly to Bea as it went down. As she was consuming a second roll, a new wave of drinks arrived. Who would hav
e supposed she could ever feel so at ease with Mrs. Olsson?

  But this was more than ease—it was gratitude. This was the perfect place, these rolls were the perfect food, this wine was the perfect glass of wine. It turned out there was nobody in the world whose company she preferred to Mrs. Charles Olsson’s—Gretchen Olsson’s—and nowhere else she would rather dine than in a restaurant owned by a man named Pierre who wore a pencil-line-thin moustache.

  “So you lost someone dear to you,” Mrs. Olsson said.

  “Yes. Yes I did.”

  “And was he very dear, Bianca?”

  “Very.”

  Those unreally large and lustrous brown-black eyes of Mrs. Olsson—they were no longer intimidating. It was a wonderful, it was a thrilling experience to stare deep into the eyes of such a beautiful woman—a celebrated beauty. Mrs. Olsson was a celebrated beauty.

  I sometimes think you look a little like me, Mrs. Olsson had once told her.

  “I’ll bet he was very handsome,” Mrs. Olsson said.

  “Henry? Handsome? I don’t know. Maybe. He was brilliantly smart.”

  “I’m sorry, baby,” Mrs. Olsson said. There wasn’t another woman of Bea’s acquaintance who could successfully deliver a baby in quite this way, or that earlier darling, lending the endearments such a wry, fluent tenderness.

  “It’s been very hard,” Bea said.

  “I can see.”

  “Is it so obvious?”

  “To me it is. You know you can’t fool me, Bea.”

  “I know.” And then Bea uttered perhaps the boldest remark she’d ever made to Mrs. Olsson: “But I honestly don’t think I’ve tried to.”

  It was as though Bea had declared, in perfect candor, This is really me, and for a moment their intertwined glances formed a sort of enclosure, wherein each understood the other intimately. Then Mrs. Olsson smiled lightly and said, “Now eat some olives, baby. And a roll. And drink your wine.”

  Bea needed no encouragement. Without the slightest tincture of self-consciousness, she had cracked open a third crusty roll and had downed most of her second glass of wine. She couldn’t remember the last time food had tasted so good. Mrs. Olsson looked amused, perhaps—solicitous, certainly.

  “And you felt you couldn’t go on?” Mrs. Olsson said.

  “For a while.”

  “You felt you’d lost your one true love?”

  Bea took the guidance she was so kindly being offered. “That’s right,” she confessed. “I did. I wear the locket he gave me. Every day.”

  The look Mrs. Olsson trained on the locket was disconcertingly cool and appraising. “Garnet?” she said.

  “Amethyst,” Bea replied. “It’s purple.”

  “Garnets come in purple,” Mrs. Olsson said.

  “Really? I didn’t know. But I wear it every day,” Bea said.

  “Nice.”

  “Every day,” Bea repeated.

  “You know something? I have something for you to ponder.” And Mrs. Olsson paused melodramatically.

  Bea had long understood just how ardently Mrs. Olsson relished this role of interpreter of life’s emotional mysteries. What Bea hadn’t understood, until now, was just how much she herself enjoyed playing audience to Mrs. Olsson in this role. She adored Mrs. Olsson. “Now, with a very pretty girl,” Mrs. Olsson began, “someone like you, Bianca, well, that’s the way it has to be.”

  “The way what? The way what has to be?”

  “Losing your true love.”

  What was Mrs. Olsson saying? “You mean Henry was fated to die?”

  “Heavens no. But if he hadn’t, then he wouldn’t have been your true love. You see, for very pretty girls, their one true love’s always a lost love.”

  “Why pretty girls? What’s so different about—them?” Bea caught herself just in time. She’d almost said us. To clear her head, she took another sip of wine.

  “Listen closely. Because this is a difficult thing to talk about, isn’t it?”

  In the avid way Mrs. Olsson canted forward, with a slight comely turn of the face, Bea was again made aware of just how much Mrs. Olsson was Ronny’s mother, or he her son. They shared this eager impulse to talk their way toward the truth. Although Ronny was a bookworm, and Mrs. Olsson freely confessed to not reading much of anything, temperamentally she was no less a philosopher than her son. What linked together all her wayward and inappropriate talk—her jarring observations about money, or Negroes, or Catholics—was this shared probing conversational propulsion. “But I think I can explain. Consider the homely little mouse in your average high school class. She spends a whole lifetime thinking all her achiness and loneliness would magically vanish if she could just nab the heart of the football captain, or the class president. You know, the Charley Olsson of the class. Of course the Charley Olssons don’t know she’s alive, little mouse. But the Bi-an-ca Pa-ra-di-so of the class, she can get the football player, or the class president. Or the Charley Olsson. So let’s say she does get him—then what? The ache’s still there, isn’t it?

  “See, it’s the one thing she shares with the class mouse. They both need to believe if they could only meet the right boy, the ache would go away. You see? The girl who can get the football captain, for her it’s got to be a lost love. Got to be the boy whose family moved away when he was twelve. Or else the one drowned at summer camp. Or the one you exchanged glances with on a bus but never spoke to.”

  “It’s funny you should mention … I sometimes feel as though everything in my life really started one Friday afternoon last May on a Woodward streetcar when—”

  “Or else the one who goes off to war and doesn’t come back.”

  Lunch arrived on a cloud of inviting aromas. There were steaks and green beans and also long but very thin French fries, which Bea cut with a knife and Mrs. Olsson ate with her fingers. Each flavor was more satisfying than the next. Although Bea naturally wouldn’t think of requesting any such thing, and indeed hadn’t finished her second glass, a third glass of wine appeared, as well as a new drink for Mrs. Olsson, who talked about her charity work. (She’d recently become active in the War Chest and the Save the Children foundation.) When Mrs. Olsson went off to the ladies’ room, Bea ate four quick warm handfuls of French fries. Honestly, she didn’t know when she’d last felt so hungry.

  Mrs. Olsson, the moment she returned to the table, took up the pressing subject once more. “So now you might say your life’s nearly complete, my dear. You have your lost love. And that’s something you’ll always have. What you don’t seem to have is some suitable way to live.”

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “And Ronny doesn’t either. You know he gets blue. Poor sweet boy, it breaks my heart, seeing him so blue. He needs to figure out a future for himself.”

  Perhaps emboldened by the fancy wine, Bea said, “He tells me you’re pressuring him to become an art professor.”

  “Pressuring? Is that what he says? When I just want to see my boy happy? Is that such a crime?”

  “Actually, I’m thinking myself of eventually going back to school. Regular school, not art school. I love literature, and maybe it would enrich my art to study—”

  “This Henry of yours. Was he as good-looking as Ronny?”

  “Oh no. I mean not in the same—”

  “Or as smart?”

  You could say that Mrs. Olsson kept interrupting, since so many of Bea’s sentences were left unfinished. Or you could say she was facilitating the conversation, given how difficult Bea was finding it to pursue a thought to its end. “Well I think he was, though in a different way. Henry was a mathematician.”

  “Oh mathematics. Charley’s a whiz for numbers—he can tell you how many bottles of Hill’s nose drops he sold in Grand Rapids last month. But Ronny? Ronny is an artist.” Mrs. Olsson offered this with the firm conviction of somebody who had spent the morning in a museum—who had assessed one portrait after another before concluding that, on the whole, her son could have done better.

  �
��I am not pressuring,” Mrs. Olsson went on. “I am clarifying. What I’m saying is, most professors are stuck living in dreary little shoeboxes with bad plumbing. But Ronny wouldn’t be. I’d see to that.

  “What I’m saying is that if—and again I’m not pressuring, dear, I’m clarifying—that if, just say, if the two of you were ever to decide you actually wanted to tie the knot and get married, I would put up no obstacles. None.”

  “Well that’s hardly what we’re—I mean I feel sure Ronny isn’t—”

  Mrs. Olsson’s dumbfounding announcement sparked so many questions and objections that Bea couldn’t assemble anything coherent. But Mrs. Olsson quashed all her struggling with one regal wave.

  “Do you recall what I asked the last time we lunched here? I asked you: In your heart of hearts, what is it you want, Bianca?”

  It was one of those typically abrupt turnarounds from Mrs. Olsson. One moment, she couldn’t remember having taken you to Pierre’s; the next, dark eyes suddenly sharp as tacks, she was reciting verbatim the question she posed at Pierre’s three months before.

  “Back then, honey? I was thinking maybe you’re a bit of a gold digger. You blame me? I wasn’t going to blame you if you were just a bit of one. I was a bit of one, once upon a time. But I wanted you to understand you couldn’t put one over on me.

  “Isn’t it funny? I worried you were a gold digger and now I’m worrying you’re not enough of a gold digger—worrying you’re so smitten with this idea of a lost love, of becoming some sort of gorgeous starving girlartist, with such big starving girl-artist eyes, that you don’t realize you may accidentally be throwing your life away.

  “Do you see what I’m saying? Hell, you can have your lost love, Bea. He was brilliant and he was good-looking and he gave up his life, no less, for you and his country. That’s so beautiful. It’ll always be so beautiful. But you can also have a life that allows lunches at Pierre’s and shopping in New York, all the while married to a husband so handsome you’ll be the envy of every woman you meet.”

  “I better tell you something,” Bea began, and then, needing fortification, sipped from her newest tower of wine. She could hardly believe she was going to utter the words she was going to utter: “I gave myself to Henry.”