“Yes. I’ve gone to a number of openings there. Very nice.”
Now it seemed to him she was treating him as if they’d just met, but he was not about to give up. “Do you know Rory…the framer?”
“Yes. I do. He does museum quality work. He’s the best in the area.”
Thaw sensed no change in her attitude. He plunged onward. “Well, he’s framing twenty of my pictures after which I’m going to have a show at the gallery.”
“That’s quite a number, Thaw.” At the other end of the phone, Natalie began to play with a lock of hair that had fallen forward over her shoulder. “When’s the show?”
“I don’t know yet.” Darn it, Thaw complained to himself, just when she was beginning to sound interested. “We haven’t set the date. He has to do the framing first.”
“That ought to cost you a pretty penny.”
Good, she was thinking. “I suppose. But not in comparison to what he thinks I can get for the finished products.”
“Really?” Natalie let go of the lock of hair.
Thaw decided to go for it. “Look, Natalie. I didn’t call you to talk about me. I want to talk about you. I miss you terribly. And I’m working hard on changing my lifestyle…to one your parents and friends could understand better. So I was wondering. Could you meet me for lunch…or dinner? I don’t plan to return before Saturday morning. Just picking out frames will take me into tomorrow afternoon at least.”
“I don’t know, Thaw. I’m still thinking. What day did you say your show opened?”
“I told you. I don’t know yet.” Had he sounded testy? He took a breath. “We haven’t set the date. Have to get the framing done first.”
“Why don’t you call me again when you know when the show will be. We can talk then.”
He’d lost her. “But that might not be for a couple of months, Nat.”
“Well, move it up then.” She laughed.
His heart jumped with pleasure at the sound of the old Nat. “Oh, Nat.”
“Look, Thaw, I’m really busy right now. Call me when you have a date for the show. All right?”
“All right. I’ll call you when I have a date for the show.”
“Good luck, Thaw. With the show I mean.”
“Thanks, Nat.”
“Talk to you. Bye.”
“Bye.” He put the phone back on the receiver. Where his stomach had been he felt an empty feeling. Still he held on; at least the door was not completely shut. A small glimmer of hope still beamed. He’d have to commit Rory to a show at the earliest date possible. Not a bad idea, all considered. Not a bad idea at all.
THREE Reaching Out
1. Fall 2019: With the Framer
As he prepared to pull up to the curb Thaw rotated his wrist and noted that his watch read eleven eighteen. He pushed his foot into the brake, put the van in park, rolled up the windows, removed the keys from the ignition, alighting quickly onto the street. In a series of almost continuously varied but uninterrupted motions, he then reached across the driver’s seat, grabbed his backpack and swung it over his shoulder, slammed the van door and headed for the rear of the van. Once there, he pushed downward on the handle of first one and then the other door, simultaneously swung them open and reached for a painting. His backpack inhibited his freedom of movement, so he grabbed the top painting with his left hand on its closer broad side, pulled it out and let it waft downward slowly into a vertical position, picture side out. He then closed each of the doors with his right hand, after which he headed for the gallery.
The day was mild with an occasional small gust that lifted and released softly the stiff, broad canvas which held its shape in the breeze like the topsail of some ancient galley. It was a rather large piece, four feet wide by three feet long. In some celebration of spring, its colors were more delicate than most of Thaw’s paintings and featured what might have been a swirl of mauve and soft green feathers, budding leaves and tiny stars or flowers all wrapping into and around a nest of eggs containing one obviously newly hatched and awkwardly-shaped bird.
Pushing open the front door, Thaw saw no one. A young, energetic voice called from behind one of the display walls, “Be right with you.” This was followed but a second later by the appearance of Rory. His thick auburn hair fell to the side of his brow. His dark brown eyes sparkled above a ready smile. He wore loose-fitting beige pants, work boots that were obviously new, a brown-orange loose knit sweater under which showed the collar of a light yellow shirt and a darker tie through which ran aquas, yellows and reds that lent his appearance only a slightly more formal tone.
“Theodore! Well if it isn’t Theodore Wamp in the flesh! I was wondering when you were going to stop by. How’s it been going, man? Painting up a storm? Whatcha got there?” With a sudden switch to very careful and smooth movement he lifted the painting from Thaw’s hands and lay it face up on the counter before the frame samples. “Nice. Very nice,” he commented, reaching for a broad muted pink gold framing corner. “Yes. Very nice. Definitely needs gold.” And he pulled out a smaller, black corner. “That would never do it justice. Too small. Closes in the picture. What you want is an openness. Something that will complement not stop the colors.” He tried a few more frames. “Nope.” He returned to his original choice. “Yup. That’s it. What do you think?”
“Well, I like it. I like it very much. But will I like the price?”
“Remember what I told you. Frame cheap. Sell cheap. Frame well. Sell high. If someone is going to invest a thousand dollars in a picture they might as well invest fifteen hundred and go home happy. That’s my job. I frame. I sell. I send my people home happy!”
Thaw went straight to the point. “What’s a job like this going to cost me?”
“That depends. How many do you have?”
“Suppose I bring you five.”
“Probably about two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Suppose I bring you ten.”
“Two twenty-five.”
“What about twenty?
“Two fifteen. But no lower.”
“Okay. Two fifteen. But you can’t do them all the same.”
“I never do two the same unless they’re a pair.”
“And some are smaller and some are larger.”
“How much larger?”
“Five by seven feet.”
“We’ll use cheaper framing lengths. Not so fancy.”
“What about if they’re smaller?”
“How small?”
“Two foot by three foot.”
“We’ll use fancy framing or we’ll mat them and throw in a fillet.”
“What’s a fillet?”
“It’s a tiny frame inset inside the mat. Really rich. People go crazy over pictures with fillets in them.”
“How about if you do them in batches of five and I give you five hundred down toward materials each time you take a set and pay you the rest when the batch is done.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
Without any noticeable pause Rory then went on to suggest that when he was done framing, he could feature Thaw’s work in a show of its own there in the gallery. His notion was that Thaw would pay for the advertising and Rory would get twenty percent of the take for the duration of the show and that the show would last two weeks.
But Thaw had been thinking about things, and with an alacrity that came as a mild surprise to Rory, Thaw responded that he would prefer it if Rory were to pay for the advertising. By way of explanation Thaw was quite specific. “You must have a mailing list. I’ve seen your newsletters. You put it in your regular mailing. But I get the show on every community calendar around…do the calling and emailing.”
Rory quickly reviewed the minimal additional cost to him for this plan. “Deal.”
Thaw offered his hand to Rory who accepted it. “Deal.”
The two of them then relaxed and took a bit of a silent breather after which Thaw pushed onward. “When?”
“When will you
bring me the paintings?”
“They’re in my van now.”
“How many?”
“Twenty of them.”
“Can you bring them in now?”
“If you want.”
“Sure I want. We can frame up five right away and I’ll hang them even before the show.”
“So how soon might we do the show?”
“After the holidays, maybe. When people are looking for something to do and spring is really not quite here. Say late March or early April? Pre-empt all those first week of May openings. Sound good?”
“Sounds wonderful!” Thaw offered Rory his hand. A fleeting image of Natalie’s pale face, red ringlets floating round it like a halo, wafted through his mind. “I’ll start bringing them in out of the van.”
“Let me help you. With pictures that size, two people are always better than one.”
The two men tripped back and forth, sorting pictures each time before they returned to the van, collecting four to six of similar size for each trip back, and carrying them flat between them each time they had stacked the ones they wanted. By the time they had them all in and safely placed, it was nearing one o’clock, at which point it was agreed they were hungry. So Thaw picked up lunch for the two of them from the deli two doors down. They ate together amicably on chairs at a small table tucked behind the gallery’s last movable wall.
Together the hour flew, so that when Thaw asked if there was a bathroom he could use, Rory gave little thought to bending his policy of general refusal and told Thaw that it was the door in the small hall behind the office. Given the amount of work Thaw would be bringing him and the distance he had traveled to get here, it would not have occurred to him to say no. Especially to someone from the mountainous north. Who knew? Saying the deli had a bathroom he could use might nix the whole deal. Those northerners had their own kind of pride.
In wending his way through the framing area behind the wall of corners, Thaw discovered that while the gallery itself had been very clean and neat, the framing area behind approached what might be viewed best as a creative shambles. It was not really dusty or dirty, but clutter was everywhere: small slips of mat board littered the floor along the way with staples, scraps of tape and odd slices of frame. The floor around the chopper was strewn with wood chips.
The obviously well-used cutting-table was littered with miscellaneous framing scraps and tools. Hundreds of razor cuts sliced into its edge. They formed a pattern similar to the grass an energetic child might have crayoned across the bottom of a drawing. The pattern stretched the length of the side nearer where Rory must have stood as he cut through tape, foam core, and picture backings. Either it had not been changed in a long time, or Rory had been really busy.
Around the walls at odd angles hung pictures and frames and parts of frames. Large sheets of mat board stood stashed in bins and, still wrapped in shipping paper, more leaned against a wall. Overhead, along the side of the wall, supported by metal braces, were stashed framing lengths. Hundreds of them. And beneath them more lengths stood in vertical shipping paper-wrapped packages. Under the chopper lay a number of various length brown paper wrapped packages. Thaw guessed they would be metal frames and chops. A coffee pot with paper cups, some used, some stacked clean for future use, stood in the back corner on top of a small refrigerator.
Even the bathroom had its share of clutter: toilet paper rolls, some unused, some empty; miscellaneous bottles of soap and hand cleaner, most half empty. A paintbrush. Again, cluttered but clean. Rory’s world. And, by the look of it, very busy and complicated by the fact that he worked totally alone.
Rory and Thaw spent the better part of the afternoon selecting framing for half a dozen of the pictures and discussing ways to feature Thaw’s work. Periodically their progress was interrupted either by people picking up completed work, coming in to browse at the display of watercolors by the current featured artist, or to ask a question about where they might get a print or could they “buy” a picture hanger. Rory moved easily between Thaw and each interruption. Most of the people seemed to know Rory. Some seemed to be old friends.
Around three, Rory told Thaw he was going to close a bit early today as he had been invited to a cocktail party at the home of a regular customer who lived about twenty minutes outside of town. He needed time to freshen up and pick up Doreen. So the frame selection process was interrupted with the plan to complete the work on Friday. Thaw asked when Rory thought he would finish the first of the framings.
“Well, I can get you five to ten done in two weeks. But don’t hold me to more than five. The key is to get all twenty done in six weeks, right? So if things get hectic I’m going to frame for you when I can rather than always on schedule.”
“Sounds good to me. But any chance you could frame the first one by tomorrow night?”
“Only if you let me pick which one I am going to frame.”
“Okay. You pick. Any one.”
“But if it’s not one we’ve decided about today, I’ll pick the one and the frame. Can you go with that? Because the problem is that most of the frames I have to order. So I have to find one that I can frame with what is in stock. Can you go with that?”
“I can go with that. Just as long as it’s done by tomorrow night.”
Thaw gave Rory a check for five hundred dollars, said he’d see him in the morning, and departed around 3:30. The afternoon sun was a bit warmer than it had been earlier and the breeze had quieted.
Thaw drove down University Avenue until he spied a small coffee shop with a telephone sign on the window. He stopped the van, got out, entered the shop, sat himself at the counter, and ordered a black coffee and dish of rice pudding. The phone booth was in the back of the shop. While he waited for his order to appear, he walked back and called Natalie.
“Good afternoon. Bain Planning Department. Natalie Birnbaum speaking.”
“Nat.”
“Thaw. Didn’t I just talk to you? What’s going on now?” Impatience permeated Natalie’s response.
“But, Nat…”
“Nat what?”
“I moved it up, Nat.”
“Moved what up? Oh, no. Not that.”
“You promised, Nat. You promised.”
“Oh, Thaw.” A smile crept into her voice. “I guess I did.”
“The show will be in six weeks. Last week of April, first week of May. At Rory’s gallery. Will you go with me?”
“Only if I can bring my sister. I need protection.”
“Bring your sister. Bring your boss. Bring the whole town. Just go with me.”
“Oh, okay.”
“And what about lunch tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I’m awful busy right now. The Governor is planning for development of an inter-county planning board and I’m supposed to prepare Bain’s recommendations for review by the County Legislature and present it at their regular meeting on Tuesday. And we’re all caught up in a lawsuit involving the question of whether or not a toxic waste site was incorrectly zoned. It’s crazy here, Thaw, right now. Just crazy.”
“But you gotta’ eat, Nat. We could just go next door to where you work. That little deli place…with the tables.”
“Oh, okay.” She sounded a bit resentful. Still she had said she’d see him. He didn’t care. She continued, still sounding a bit snappy. “But I’m going to Aesopolis with my sister for the weekend so no talk about Friday night or Saturday. Got it? And I still need some time, so eating with you is not getting back with you. Got it?”
“I got it.”
“Good. Eleven forty-five tomorrow. Before the crush. All right. I’ll have about a half an hour, not more.”
“Half an hour. Not more. See ya’, Nat.”
“See ya’ then, Thaw.
“And Nat?”
“What now, Thaw?”
“Thanks, Nat. Thanks.”
He hung up the phone and returned to the table. His coffee was reasonably hot, but he didn’t want the rice pudding anymore.
He slugged down the coffee and paid up, leaving some change under the untouched pudding plate for the server. He’d go and walk along the James. Maybe he’d sketch a bit. In his mind a door stood just ajar and on the other side of the door stood Natalie. The light upon her sweet face and body was lovely, but her expression remained inscrutable. Nonetheless, there was a light and he could see her. If only now he could help her to see him. Not as he had been, but differently…and as he was…and was becoming. A lightly whistled tune escaped his lips as he turned the key in the ignition and wheeled the van around toward the river.
The little deli was crowded despite the early hour. Thaw grabbed a table near the window, hung his backpack over the chair, got himself a cup of black coffee and sat down to wait. He was a few minutes early, but that was fine. It would give him time to compose himself—however, he had barely seated himself when she appeared.
The whole day shot suddenly full with multi-colored lights. There she was, Natalie, laughing and chatting with some of her office buddies, two men and a woman. She looked wonderful. She always did, but spring seemed to help her to blossom. Her loose flowing clothes suited her slim lines and long legs. She wore a robin’s egg blue scarf beneath her loosely flared burnt orange full length coat and a bit of a red fitted skirt that stopped just above the knees peeked out beneath it. Her long strides tended to cause her legs to play hide and seek as she moved. She carried a rather large straw shoulder bag. Who would ever believe that this elegant, stylish young woman was the same boot stomping, blue jean wearing, make-up-free Natalie he loved in the mountains? No wonder her friends thought he was a loser.
Spying Thaw almost immediately, she spoke to her friends over her shoulder and approached him with that light airiness he so loved, slipping quickly into the seat in front of him and inquiring as to what he was having to eat. Despite her slim build, Natalie was always ready for food. Thaw had anticipated this and said he would have a ham and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread and asked her what she would like. She selected a small Greek salad and a glass of milk.
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