The Color of Light

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  “Hey, did you hear? There was an attack in Washington Square Park last night.” Portia’s eyes went big and round. She’d just moved from Boston to New York.

  “Wow,” said Tessa. “That’s, like, a block away from your apartment.”

  David’s eyes were on his brushes. “Say, Tessa. What are you doing later?”

  Portia brightened. “Yes, we’re going out for Indian food, as long as David walks me home. Why don’t you join us?”

  “I can’t, I’m meeting Lucian after this.”

  There was a silence as Portia wiped her brushes clean on paper towels, and David busied himself rubbing his palette down with mineral spirits.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” said Portia.

  “The guy’s a jerk,” said David.

  “What do you mean?” Tessa said uneasily.

  “Nothing.” Portia glared at David. “See you tomorrow. But if you change your mind, we’ll be at Madras Palace.”

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” Tessa tried to catch David’s eye, but he was concentrating on getting every last trace of paint off of his palette.

  “No. Have fun.” he said shortly. His knife made a horrible screeching sound as it scraped on the glass.

  “He’s just jealous,” Portia said soothingly. “Have a great time tonight.”

  Tessa took her paint box in one hand, her wet canvas in the other, and headed out into the hall. She stopped to look at the new paintings in the display case, then went on to the office, where she dropped off the space heaters and the drapes. Having discharged her monitorial duties for the evening, she went through the fire door that led to the stairway.

  It came to her, as she ran lightly up the steps, that she was completely happy. She realized, also, that she had never felt this way before, had never been completely happy in her entire life.

  The exact moment Tessa knew she was an artist was a memory crystallized like one of those prehistoric insects preserved in a drop of amber. She’d been sitting on the kitchen floor of her parents’ house, begging her mother for a pony.

  “She wants a pony?” said her grandmother, having a cup of tea at the kitchen table. “I’ll giff her a pony.” After a few fluid strokes with a plain yellow pencil, she’d handed her a stallion with a flowing mane. Which Tessa had, at the age of four, copied perfectly in every detail.

  There were lessons, the same lessons given to many little girls whose mothers think they have talent. But Tessa was not like other little girls. From the moment she could draw, she was concerned with unusual details, like getting the light right as it played across the features of a face. Her drawings and paintings had an air of loneliness to them, disquieting in the work of a child. Viewing a velvety black-and-white charcoal rendering of a girl looking out of an empty window, one of her teachers wondered aloud how a seven-year-old girl came to make such mournful drawings, then thought the better of asking a child such questions, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  Her grandfather, and by extension, her father’s side of the family, viewed the pursuit of art as the worst kind of foolishness, an assault on morality. There had been a real war when she decided to go to art school. Her family valued marriage and children above all else. Narishkeit! her grandfather had thundered. Nakkeda nekayvas!

  Foolishness and naked ladies. Her mother rolled her eyes, made her swear not to tell anybody.

  “Loosen up,” was the advice she heard most often from her instructors. “Have fun with it.” But Tessa didn’t want to loosen up. She had a gift; she could draw anything that was put in front of her. What she wanted was technique. She wanted to paint like a Renaissance old master. She wanted to know what color Titian tinted his canvas before he started working on it. She wanted to know what colors Caravaggio mixed to make his lights. She wanted to know exactly which pigments Rubens utilized to achieve those juicy flesh tones, what brown Rembrandt used in his shadows, what combination of oils and resins went into Vermeer’s painting medium. She wanted someone to show her how to make Raphael’s line and Michelangelo’s muscle masses. She wanted to know what made a good composition, and what made a bad one. She wanted to know.

  After six months in the prestigious graduate program at Parsons School of Design, Tessa knew she didn’t belong. Her fellow students were strewing dirt and found objects in corners of rooms; she wanted to paint the human figure. Seeking to transfer, she made the rounds of local art schools. One after another, their admissions counselors stared at her blankly as she explained what she was hoping to find. They had floors devoted to video and computer departments, but only the most rudimentary instruction in craft. The admissions guy at Yale actually laughed, adding snarkily that if she were looking for a school that was mired in the past, she should look up the American Academy.

  So she did.

  She’d stood for a moment before the glass-fronted entrance on Lafayette Street, afraid to go in, afraid to be disappointed again. A banner billowing in the cold March wind advertised that she was at the American Academy of Classical Art. A painting was on display in a case in the window that she took to be a Madonna and Child by Raphael. A small plaque nested next to it identified the artist as Josephine Whitby, one of the professors.

  That year, the artists’ studios were still in the basement, reachable only by freight elevator. The doors slid open on what looked like an entire floor of drying laundry; curtains zigzagging every which way, rigged precariously on clotheslines. She stood still for a moment, warily contemplating the sight; the other schools she had visited had pristine white walls, natural light from many windows, state of the art ventilation systems, well-lit studios arranged around open central areas with couches and plants. This was more like a shelter built by the homeless under a bridge.

  As she pushed drapes aside on her tour through the improvised warren of studios, she saw dozens of canvases at various stages of finish; some were in grisaille, the gray first layer utilized by classical painters like Titian and Vermeer. Some were sketchy underpaintings in earth tones of umber, sienna and ochre. There were studies of faces and hands, dramatic portraits of a single nude body standing in the light, small figurines worked out in clay as preparations for final compositions. Things she had only read about in books about secrets of the old masters. In awe, she went from one crazy space to the next, confirming over and over again that she had finally found what she’d been searching for.

  At the fourth floor, she elbowed open the door. There was a hum of activity, music, voices shouting to be heard. The sounds of the end of the day and the beginning of evening, happy sounds. Tessa pushed aside the curtain and entered her studio. She leaned her canvas against a stack of other figure studies, arranged her wet brushes in a mason jar on the windowsill, set her paint box on the floor near the radiator. Her eyes fell on the drawing of the naked woman on the bed turning toward the man in the tuxedo. She stood in front of it and gazed upon her work, her eyes half shut, in a kind of trance.

  Absorbed in the contemplation of her drawing, she paid no notice when the curtain lifted and dropped again. She heard the sound of Gracie’s voice, and a deeper, richer voice answering her; the boom of motorcycle boots on the wooden floors; the sound of Gracie throwing her things in a pile in the corner, then rushing out again.

  It was early in the semester. Gradually, voices and music and footsteps died off as people put their supplies away, propped their work up somewhere safe, and headed out to whatever they had planned for the evening. Still Tessa stood there, absorbed by her drawing and her thoughts. The floor was empty now, silent but for the sounds of the street outside.

  “Hello,” said a voice behind her.

  Tessa gasped, jerked around, took an involuntary step away from the voice, tripped over her paint box and knocked over a week’s worth of work drying against the radiator.

  A man was sitting in a folding chair on Gracie’s side of the studio. He wore a wide-brimmed fedora and a light overcoat over an immaculately tailored, double-br
easted charcoal gray suit. His legs were casually crossed, as if he had been sitting there for some time.

  “Sorry,” he apologized sincerely, but there was a bemused look on his handsome face. “I was actually trying not to startle you. Let me help you with that.”

  He uncrossed his legs, preparing to rise. “No,” she said quickly, her heart pounding. She had been so lost in her own thoughts, he might as well have yelled Boo. “You’ll be covered in paint. Don’t move. I’ll take care of it.”

  Gingerly handling the wet paintings by their sides, she inspected for damage, setting them one by one back against the radiator. Four of them were unharmed. She viewed the fifth with chagrin. A particularly deft three-quarters profile of a male model, on a very nice piece of oil-primed linen canvas she had bought for a song at New York Central Art Supply because it was in the remainder bin, had sustained a long white scratch across the groin. She sighed.

  “That’s got to hurt,” the man behind her commented mildly.

  Tessa turned to glare at him.

  “I really am sorry.” he apologized again, this time looking like he meant it. “It’s a nice piece of work. You’re very talented.”

  “Thanks,” she replied. She wondered who he was, unmindfully sitting there amidst the messy detritus of art, in his impeccable suit, with his plummy British accent, under the giant drawing of Gracie having sex with her boyfriend. He didn’t seem like someone her studio partner would know.

  “I’m waiting for Graciela,” he explained, as if he was following her thoughts. “She’s on the student liaison committee.”

  “Oh,” she said, turning back to her damaged painting. “Are you a teacher here?”

  “No. I’m on the board.”

  “Oh,” she said again. “What’s a board?”

  His eyebrows shot up, and his lips—full, sensuous lips, she noticed—curved in a smile. He unfolded his legs, stood, brushed himself off. She saw now that he was tall, more than a head taller than she was. He came closer, put out his hand.

  “I’m Raphael Sinclair.”

  Tessa put her hand in his, a little unwillingly. “Tessa Moss.” His hand closed around hers. It was cool and dry. Powerful.

  He was standing very close to her, and she felt something like an electric current running through her body as he held onto her hand. She looked up into his face; long and narrow, except for those cheekbones jutting out of it. Wide, almond-shaped eyes, as pretty as a girl’s. They were a shifting, indefinable hue, the color of smoke and shadows.

  He was not looking at her, but past her, at the drawings on her wall. The skin around his eyes tightened, and he looked as if he wanted to say something. And then Gracie was back, her heels clacking across the floor.

  “Sorry it took so long,” she explained breathlessly. “I had to make a call.”

  “Oh my God, Lucian!” Tessa slipped her hand out of his, whipped off her apron, hung it on her easel. Took off the kerchief tying back her hair, shook it out. There would be no time to wash it now. Well, Lucian was an artist, too; presumably, he was used to the smell of turpentine.

  Gracie had changed out of her painting clothes. For her meeting, she had donned a translucent white blouse with a black silky thing clearly visible underneath. Instead of her usual short skirt, she had on a pair of zebra-striped pants.

  “Feel these,” she said, guiding the stranger’s hand to her thigh. “They’re really tactile.”

  There was silence behind her. Tessa made lots of noise throwing her lipstick, Walkman and sketchbook into her bag, wished she were somewhere else.

  “You look ravishing.” she heard him say. “Honestly. Good enough to eat.”

  She executed her signature giggle. While he held her leather jacket up for her to slip into, she tossed her curls around to make them dance and shimmer. He held the curtain aside for her to pass. He glanced back at Tessa and said, “I’m sorry about your painting,” and then they were gone.

  Odd. Graciela seemed to genuinely care for Nick. They’d just moved in together somewhere in Little Italy. It didn’t make sense. Then again, Gracie flirted with DJ and David and Turner, and while she was on the subject, everybody in the whole school. Maybe this wasn’t what it looked like. Maybe they really did have student liaison committee matters to discuss.

  Tessa looked at her watch, and realized that she was supposed to meet Lucian downtown in five minutes. She threw her knapsack over her shoulder and ran.

  As she dashed up the two and a half very long flights to Lucian’s loft, Tessa felt the butterflies take flight in her stomach. Every time she went to see him, it was like the first time, her heart pounding from exhilaration and the climb. She reached the landing, knocked on the heavy door and hauled it open, feeling like her heart would burst with excitement.

  “Hallo, dahling,” said Lucian, doing his best Michael Caine. He was standing over the antique refectory table, scribbling something onto a yellow pad, movie-star handsome in the faded olive green J. Peterman sweater she’d gotten for his birthday that was exactly the color of his eyes.

  He finished with a flourish, came towards her and gave her a kiss, smiling brightly. His brown hair flopped boyishly over his forehead, and he raked his fingers through it trying to get it to behave.

  Tessa had met Lucian a year earlier, after attending a guest lecture he gave at Parsons. A week later, when she worked up the courage to call him to volunteer her services as an unpaid slave, he’d invited her up to his loft for a drink. To her great good fortune, one of his stable of assistants had just left, and a position was open. At the end of the evening he made a discreet pass at her, which she politely sidestepped, which was never mentioned again.

  The Eighties had been good to Lucian Swain. He cleaned up with his giant canvases of climactic moments from classic movies, doodling ironic little commentaries on top. With his dashing good looks, savvy socializing and pitiless British wit, he was an art star, the king of Wall Street and West Broadway. Recently matriculated MBAs, brokers, investment bankers with vast expanses of exposed-brick to cover and bonus money to burn outbid one another to own his next creation. Coincidentally or not, he also had an uncanny knack for sleeping with women who could advance him to the next level; art buyers, gallery owners, collectors. Women fell into his bed, if the stories were to be believed, by the dozen. He’d lost count of the actual number years ago.

  Tessa went to Pearl Paint for art supplies. She answered the phone. She lied to his gallery. She lied to the women. She took his daughter to the playground in Washington Square Park. She totted up his shoebox full of receipts and delivered them to his accountant. She picked up milk. She picked up lunch. She picked up his super-cool movie editor girlfriend’s dry-cleaning.

  Though he was almost twenty years older than she was, Tessa had nursed a secret crush on him; she thought he was warm, charming, brilliant, and funny. She had never met anyone like him before, coming from her little suburban corner of Chicago.

  But she had arrived on the scene late; the Eighties were over. In 1990, the recession hit the arts hard. The go-go investment bankers lost their jobs, sold their lofts at a loss, went back to school to become lawyers. And stopped buying art.

  Commissions dwindled, sales went flat. And every morning, there were two empty wine bottles on the table.

  To save money, he said, he quit drinking; the wines he preferred were all pricey. The super-cool film editor girlfriend left him. The assistants were let go, one by one, till there was only Tessa. Whatever money trickled in went to a first wife in England and child support in California, and after that, to overhead.

  The day after his gallery dropped him, he tried to take his own life, swallowing a bottle of prescription sleeping pills. Arriving at her usual time, she found him collapsed on the floor near his bed, unintelligible. An ambulance had rushed him to St. Vincent’s, where emergency room doctors pumped his stomach and kept him overnight for observation.

  She got him home and into bed, where he stayed for the rest of t
he day, crying. The days became a week, the weeks, a month. She spent her hours reassuring him that he was an important painter, persuading him to eat, fielding calls from worried friends. He told her that he loved her, that he realized now that he had always loved her. He asked her to move in with him. He asked her if she would marry him.

  His therapist thought he was finally experiencing feelings of loss he had repressed about his mother. His ex-wife in England thought he was just feeling sorry for himself. His ex-wife in California thought he was faking it to avoid paying child support. His current ex-girlfriend thought he was having a nervous breakdown because she’d left him. Tessa didn’t know what to think. She stayed at his side and held his hand.

  One of his old friends at New York magazine suggested Alcoholics Anonymous. Tessa found the nearest meeting, got him out of bed and dressed in something clean, walked him there herself. An older man with white hair and clear blue eyes found them seats, and said gently, “Welcome. There’s a lot of recovery in this room.”

  Tessa left him there, went to Balducci’s to buy a pound of Kona coffee and pick up a toothbrush, returning an hour later. He was waiting among a group of men with Astor Place haircuts and carefully manicured facial hair; soul patches, goatees, Elvis sideburns. Artists. He smiled when he saw her. “I think I’m in the right place,” he said.

  And slowly, as late winter turned to early spring, he had gotten better. One day, after a couple of weeks had gone by, she found him at his drawing table, sketching. The week after that, she found him in the studio with some of his new AA artist friends, building a ten-foot canvas. The phone rang all day. His sponsor, women he’d met at meetings. He began staying out later and later. The rakish smile returned to his face. He didn’t need her to hold his hand anymore. Or to stay over. Or to marry him.

  “Hey, Lucian. Sorry I’m late.” She put her knapsack down on the table.

  “Have you eaten?” He was cheerfully rubbing his hands together.

  “No. I’m starving.”

  “Well, then…” his brow furrowed dramatically. “I think there’s some salad niçoise left over from lunch…also, some Chinese food from the veggie place on Mott Street. Help yourself to whatever you find in the fridge. Now, come take a butcher’s at this.”