The Color of Light

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  The two men sat in silence for a moment.

  “Well, we got it under control,” said Levon. “That’s the important thing.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Rafe agreed.

  At precisely the same moment, they burst into laughter.

  “Can you believe Clayton? The sheer organization—the scope of the operation—he’s a genius.”

  “He couldn’t have done it by himself.”

  “And Whit…his nose is so far up her ass—”

  “—I thought his brain was going to explode.” They erupted in fresh laughter, Rafe bent over double, Levon pounding the desk and wiping away tears.

  Eventually their laughter slowed to a stop, and the two men sat in silence, considering the consequences of the morning’s events. Rafe picked up one of the picture frames on Levon’s desk. Two teenagers with braces on their teeth smiled at him. The boy looked just like his father.

  “How old are they?”

  “Eliot is seventeen. Sharon is twenty-one.”

  “You never talk about them.”

  Levon steepled his fingers together, leaned back in his chair. “I didn’t leave their mother on such good terms,” he said. “I’m still trying to convince them that I’m not that guy anymore.”

  Rafe turned his gaze to him, observing his kind, creased face, the grizzled beard, the comfortable but very good sweater, the black felt driving cap that he knew covered a bald spot, the wire-rimmed glasses, the smile waiting to break into a guffaw. “It’s hard to imagine you as anything other than Mr. Nice Guy.”

  “People change,” said Levon. “It’s hard to imagine you being friendly with Whit.”

  “We were never chummy. We had a common interest. I wanted to start an art school. And, as he rather heatedly pointed out, he knew who to call.”

  “Where did you meet him? I don’t see you two frequenting the same circles, somehow.”

  A black-haired girl in a black tank top and black lipstick, blue tattoos of snakes coiled around her arms from elbow to shoulder swam into his memory, then receded back into the 80s.“We had a mutual acquaintance. One of his students. She was a tattoo artist, of all things. That was why she wanted classical training.”

  “Why doesn’t April just quit?” Levon finally said, frowning. “She’s got to know she isn’t wanted.”

  “Her kind doesn’t quit,” Rafe said. “They conquer, kill everything that’s still living, level the trees and buildings, then walk away, salting the earth behind them.”

  “Poor Tessa,” said Levon, shaking his head. “Imagine being on the other side of that.” Then he broke into a grin. “Nice, sweet Tessa! Who would have thought?”

  A slight smile turned up the corners of Rafe’s mouth. “Yes,” he said. “Who would have thought.”

  21

  Saturday night, and Harker was throwing a Christmas party. He lived with Katie in a grimy ground floor apartment in a narrow pocket of the East Village that had so far escaped gentrification, on Second Street, near First Avenue. Graham, David, Ben, Portia, Gracie and Nick were all well into their second beers by the time Tessa arrived, pink-cheeked and out of breath.

  The music was deafening. Strings of colored lights crisscrossed the dim, low-ceilinged room. Tessa squinted through the haze of cigarette smoke; she didn’t recognize anybody. The small apartment was packed with people who looked like they were in the music business, thin even by New York standards, dressed in black, long-haired, tattooed. Something made her look down. A large cockroach, the size of a man’s thumb, was lumbering past her shoe. It had been sprayed with orange glow-in-the-dark paint. She could see another one making its way towards the kitchen, fluorescing a neon green.

  David appeared at her side, and she smiled, happy to see him. She could smell his aftershave over the odors of sweat and beer. “We’re out here,” he said. Lightly, he took her elbow, guided her through the crowd to the yard. The Academy students had laid claim to the patio, where they were sitting in lawn chairs looking up at the stars.

  Whatever light there was reflected on Graham’s high white forehead, making him look wise. Tessa wondered why Gracie wasn’t freezing her butt off in a box-pleated plaid skirt that was even shorter than usual. Portia was stretched out on a rusty chaise lounge, legs crossed at the ankle, hands shoved deep in the pockets of her navy pea coat for warmth.

  “I thought you weren’t going to show,” shouted Portia over the music. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Lucian tonight?”

  “He had a meeting,” said Tessa. “I’m going over there later.” There was a startled look on her face, as if she had received an important piece of unexpected news she hadn’t quite processed yet. Portia was about to ask her about it when Harker appeared. He looked lankier than usual in a pair of black stovepipe pants. Tonight he was wearing black horn-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses, making him look a bit like a Sixties campus radical. He kissed Tessa on the side of her cheek, thrust a Corona into her hand, balancing one of his hand-rolled cigarettes in the corner of his mouth.

  “Welcome to Casa Miller,” he said, gesturing out into the dark recesses of the yard. “Have you met the neighbors?”

  The yard behind the apartment ran for some distance, stopping momentarily at an antiquated wrought iron gate, then rolled on into the darkness. Tessa made out one stationery shape in the near distance, and then another, and another.

  “Are those…headstones?”

  Harker chortled in delight, the cigarette bobbing up and down. “Yeah. Our place backs up to Marble Cemetery. Founded 1831. Ain’t it creepy?”

  A lean, dark-haired girl came outside looking for him, hugging her thin arms around herself to ward off the cold.

  “Your daddy’s really a preacher?” Ben said.

  “Yeah. So is Katie’s,” he said, slinging his arm around his girlfriend and giving her a squeeze. She smiled at him, gathered up some empty glasses, headed back inside where it was warm.

  “And he’s okay with you two living together?” asked Graham, curious.

  “Insisted on it,” said Harker. “He figured she was safer that way.” He pushed his hair back behind one ear. “Gotta see to the guests inside, man. There’s an agent in there somewhere. Sonic Death Monkeys are rocking out CBGB’s later tonight.”

  “Go get him, tiger,” said Graham.

  Tessa lowered herself gingerly into a shredding 1970s era webbed lawn chair. Happily, it held. “Hear anything from Clayton?” she asked Ben, who was reclining on the next lounge with his hands folded over his chest.

  He shook his head no. His umber skin rendered him barely visible in the darkness of the backyard. “He’ll be all right,” he said. “He’s been through worse.”

  She leaned in closer. “Levon told me he spent some time in an institution.”

  He sighed, a deep, troubled sound. “Clayton’s father is in construction. And when I say he’s in construction, I mean he built half the buildings in Jackson, Mississippi. Old South, a World War II veteran, saw half his buddies blown away on Omaha Beach, fondly remembers when black folks rode in the back of the bus. He wasn’t really happy about his only son wanting to be an artist. That’s how it is down South. God first, then football. He told him art was for faggots, boys play sports. Well, you know Clayton. There were daily battles all through his school years, real knockdown, drag-out, take-no-prisoners affairs.

  “He told me he tried sports; freshman year he did a half-assed job playing baseball, sophomore year a half-assed job wrestling, but at night, in the privacy of his own room, he was sculpting little clay figures when he should have been doing homework. When his daddy found out—a maid found them under the bed and brought it to his attention—he went ballistic. Smashed them to bits. Put him in a nut house, kept him there for six months.”

  “Wow,” she said, shocked. “I had no idea.”

  The talk drifted on to a discussion of the upcoming Christmas vacation. The lawn chair was deceptively comfortable. It was one of those mild December nights you get sometimes
in the city, the air fresh and smelling of fallen leaves, earth and wood smoke. Tessa burrowed deep into her scarf, leaving only her eyes visible. Resting her head against the frayed webbing of her chair, she gazed up at the sky, colored a murky reddish purple by the lights of Manhattan, and let the conversation eddy on without her.

  Zaydie was in the emergency room again. During lunch at Uncle Allen’s house, his head went down and he slumped over on the table. It was only for a moment—he had revived seconds later, said ach, it was nothing—but Allen called an ambulance and rushed him to the hospital.

  Hesitantly, her mother had added, “There’s something else, Tessa.” And proceeded to tell her that her grandfather’s name was not Abe Moss, but Yechezkel Wizotsky.

  Reeling in shock, Tessa had barely comprehended the rest of the story. In the summer of 1944, after the Soviets liberated Wlodawa, they’d drafted him into the Red Army. For the price of a bottle of vodka, he was able to bribe a guard to smuggle him out of their encampment, dressed in women’s clothing. To confound the agents who would surely come after deserters, he changed Wizotsky to Moscowicz, his mother’s maiden name. Later on, when the immigration officer at Ellis Island couldn’t pronounce the Hebrew name Yechezkel, he said, “Okay, Abie,” and inscribed the simpler Abraham Moskowitz onto his papers. Zaydie, eager to leave the ashes of Europe behind him, signed on the dotted line. A couple of years later, when he saw his suppliers struggling with the name Moskowitz, he shortened it to Moss.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” her mother warned her. “Zaydie’s still afraid the KGB is coming to get him. He’s only telling us now because he thinks he’s going to die.”

  Her father’s voice in the background. They were leaving for the hospital. Her mother said a harried goodbye and hung up the phone.

  Someone was talking to her. Portia was looking at her curiously. She had just asked her for the second time if she had plans for Christmas.

  She forced herself back to the present. “I’ll be here. No plans to go back to Chicago anytime soon.”

  “What about Lucian?”

  “Always goes to England for the week. His old school chum made it big in television over there, he has some grand manor house on the River Tweed or something.”

  “So you’ll join us!” Portia said gleefully. For the seven days between Christmas and New Years, her parents would be at the villa of an Italian noble they had met while sailing to Turkey. Graham needed to save money, he was sticking around to work on his thesis. Harker’s band was signed for gigs all through Christmas week. And Witnesses didn’t celebrate Christmas, so Ben would be staying on in New York.

  “I could always go to my grandfather’s place in the city,” she admitted. “But I think I’d rather be in Newport. I’m inviting everybody who can’t be with family. Come on, it’ll be fun!”

  “Newport?”

  “Rhode Island. My family has a place there, a cottage.”

  “Um. Okay,” she agreed, envisioning the lot of them crammed together into a thatched hut, something from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

  The music changed. It was Dee Lite and Groove is in the Heart now. Gracie and Nick got up to dance. David looked over at Tessa, smiling, raising his eyebrows, an invitation. For a moment, she thought of Lucian. Not for the first time, she wondered if April had called him to cry on his shoulder over Friday’s prank, and a pang of remorse stole into her heart. Then she smiled back at David and got up to dance.

  Later that night, they all ended up at CBGB’s to see Harker’s band. As expected, the Sonic Death Monkeys rocked the house. It was packed, the walls resonating with heavy bass vibrations and pre-holiday excitement. The art students drank, danced, sweated, shouted until they were hoarse, pumped their fists into the air along with the rest of the downtown creatures of the night, and at two in the morning they emerged from the club, spent, sweaty, deafened, steam rising off of their overheated bodies in the cold air.

  The weather had changed in the few hours that they had been inside the club. The sky had cleared and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees, a sharp wind penetrating their damp clothing. For a few moments they huddled together before breaking off into smaller groups and heading off into different directions, and it was in that moment that Tessa felt someone watching her. Turning around, she was sure she saw something, a glimpse of billowing coattails, disappearing around the corner into a dim and gritty side street. Curious, she waited for a figure to cross the puddle of light under the streetlamp.

  But the sidewalk was empty. A homeless man was sleeping on a pile of flattened cardboard boxes in a doorway; this was the Bowery, after all, the wide boulevard lined with SRO’s and shelters. After a moment she shrugged and turned back to her friends, attributing the mirage to the lateness of the hour and the beer.

  22

  The first flyer was spotted a few days before Christmas, fluttering from a telephone pole at Spring Street and West Broadway.

  I have a show opening at OK Solomon, it said under the by-now familiar photograph of April spread-legged on Lucian’s bed. New Paintings, by April Huffman.

  By lunchtime, they had been sighted all over downtown. Legions of them were pasted in long rows along the temporary scaffolding used as informal kiosks all over the city. Hundreds more papered the sides of buildings, stapled over posters for movies and upcoming concerts. The flyers had sprung up overnight, defacing every lamp and telephone pole between Broadway and the Hudson River. It was all anyone could talk about.

  “Well,” said Graham. “She’s a genius at marketing herself. You’ve got to give her props.”

  “Are we going?” David asked Portia.

  “Are you kidding? When’s the opening?”

  “Thursday night,” said Tessa, the steel door that led in from the stairway shutting behind her. Sculpture had just ended, and she was hauling a small statuette of a woman standing in contrapasto, hands linked fetchingly behind her back, surprisingly heavy for its size. It was the product of a six week pose with the model named Sivan, petite but well-proportioned, a back like a cello, a pear-shaped bottom, slim cylindrical arms, long curly hair. Tessa was considering using Sivan as a model for her thesis project.

  “What do you reckon she’s done this time?” said Harker. “I mean, how many impressionist blow job paintings can you sell?”

  “Maybe she’s tried a new medium this time,” said David.

  “Decoupage,” suggested Graham. “Or maybe she’s doing portraits now. You know. From the waist down.”

  There was a commotion in the back of the room. Clayton had materialized in front of the sculptors’ studio, where he was grabbing a thrashing Gracie around the waist and throwing himself backwards onto the floor. His big body broke her fall. “Come on, show me some love!” he was bellowing.

  “What about you, Tessa?” David prodded her. “Are you going?”

  Tessa made a sad face. “Gee, I have to work Thursday night. So sorry.”

  “Come on, Tessa,” he coaxed. “One hour, one lousy hour. Free white wine. It’s bound to be terrible. Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”

  In final days before winter break, Tessa had already handed in her History of Composition report, using up a dozen sheets of tracing paper to analyze the horizontal, vertical and diagonal movements in Hopper’s Nighthawks. She wasn’t through with Whit’s Perspective assignment yet, it was taking longer than she had expected. Tomorrow was the due date, no exceptions, so she would be working late into the night.

  By now, they were supposed to be well along in their thesis projects. Ben was steadily working on a huge slab of gray clay, to which he continually fastened small, writhing forms. When Tessa peered closer, she could see the figures were all trapped, desperately struggling to escape. She’d looked to him for explanation.

  “It’s my Gates of Hell,” he said, referring to Rodin’s famous doors. “We’re all trying to get away from something.”

  Portia had decided on a series of paintings with the theme of childh
ood. Her sketches had a delicately unbalanced Diane Arbus quality to them, as if the children who populated them were negotiating through an unsafe world. Harker was making portraits of people he knew in the East Village; a waitress at Veselka, a Halal butcher, a club kid who said she was a vampire.

  Graham was doing biblical art. “Aren’t they a little, um, too classical?” Tessa asked cautiously, looking at the sketches on his wall. “I mean, we’re supposed to be fighting this image of being stuck in the past.”

  Leafing through a Rembrandt book, he shrugged, bored with the argument. “What do I care what people think? If I want to paint Saint Sebastian, the sexiest saint, or Sergius and Bacchus, martyred for the love that dares not speak its name, I will. Why do I have to get the art establishment’s Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval first?”

  The only student who seemed completely up in the air was Clayton. Upon returning from his two-week suspension, he’d mocked up a table full of clay figurines, all genders and subject matters. There was a Minotaur, holding its huge horned head as if it had a headache. To this he had added a pair of wrestlers, a rearing horse, two women embracing, a bust of his own head.

  There was also a ghostly winged figure spreading its arms in welcome, a skeletal face hidden by a cloak, ragged drapery suspended behind it like it was whipped by the wind. When she asked him what it meant, he wrapped his arms around her waist and flew backwards into the air. Tessa experienced a momentary feeling of weightlessness before bouncing onto Clayton’s hard abdomen. She’d struggled to her feet, feeling confused and a little embarrassed while the first-year students who were gathered around brayed with laughter and he grinned like a devil, or a fool.

  Late one night, as they lay sprawled across the beat-up couches in the lounge area near the windows, finished with their work but too exhausted to go home, she finally related the convoluted history of her family name.

  “Holy cow,” Ben said. “So technically, you’re Tessa Wizotsky.”