The Color of Light

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  ‘I have to get these to the Seven Dwarfs,’ says Red. ‘Portia’s waiting for this tube of Naples yellow.’

  ‘Stay here in the woods with me,’ says the Wolf.

  ‘Why?’ says Red.

  ‘Because…’” and here, his voice grew shaky. “‘Because I’m in love with you,’ he says.”

  Tessa smiled up at him, reached up to touch his cheek with cold fingertips. He leaned over, rested his forehead on hers. “Hang in there, sweet girl,” he whispered. “Stay with me.”

  “Okay,” she said obediently. And closed her eyes.

  Startled, he called her name, patted her cheeks, but it was useless; she had slipped away from him into unconsciousness. He strained to hear the cry of an approaching ambulance siren, but the streets were strangely tranquil this morning.

  He was already on his knees. He clasped his hands together, bowed his head and prayed.

  Dear God. You know what I am. Your archbishop once told me that my purpose on this earth was to punish the wayward, the reckless, those who ask questions, the ones who stray. I don’t know if You hear the prayers of a creature like me, but I need Your help, Lord. I am wicked, and she is good. But here I stand healed, and here she lies, dying. I will do whatever You ask of me, give her up, if that is the price. Please, Lord. Give her another chance. Bring back my Tessa, who fills Your world with light.

  He waited. The dear eyes stayed closed, the lashes long and black against pale cheeks.

  Frantic, he clutched his forehead. He could lift her, run with her to the emergency room at nearby Beth Israel, but it was risky; he didn’t know where the bullet was lodged, if it was in one piece or many, it was possible he could do more damage by moving her.

  He held her face, pressed his cheek to hers. Choked back a sob. Tessa, don’t leave me here. I don’t want to walk through this world without you.

  There was one last thing he could try.

  If he could get her to drink his blood, she might still die, but she would return in a day or two as a vampire. She wouldn’t be the same; Tessa with an unquenchable thirst, Tessa with a pitiless hunger, Tessa without a soul, but he was desperate; he couldn’t bear to lose her.

  He ran to the kitchen, rummaged through drawers till he found a knife. Kneeling at her side, he made a slash across his chest, over his heart. Blood welled up. A single drop spilled down his ribs. He lifted her into his lap, holding her as gently as he could. Then he turned her face towards his chest and leaned over her.

  “What have you done to Crumpet?” came an outraged voice from behind him.

  Ram was in the doorway. He was glaring accusingly at Tessa’s limp body, the pool of blood on the carpet. His hands were curled into fists.

  Taken by surprise, words tumbled out of him. “They told her at Magikal Childe, heart’s blood of a virgin…this morning there’s this crucial vote, future of the school. She kept telling me they needed me, they needed me…drinking her blood was the only way.” Tears were stinging his eyes. “I wouldn’t do it, so the little idiot shot herself. I think she’s…” He choked, bent over her again. “I don’t have time for this. What are you doing here, anyway? Go away.”

  “Anastasia said you were dying. I wanted to get to that pie safe before anybody else did.” He came closer. “Did you call 911?”

  “Ten minutes ago.”

  “The President’s in town. He’s at the UN this morning. The whole East Side’s a parking lot.”

  Ram came into the room. Narrowing his eyes, he saw the slash on Rafe’s chest, looked into Tessa’s pale face, realized immediately what he was about to do.

  “Don’t,” he said, without hesitation. “Don’t do it.”

  “I have to,” Rafe said. “I can’t live without her.”

  “If that’s the only choice,” he said, his voice hushed with compassion, “turning her into one of us…then let her go.”

  Rafe stared at him. Suddenly, he leapt to his feet, ran to the credenza. Opened and closed drawers until he found his wallet, stowed safely away after the students recovered it from his bloody clothing. He pulled out a card, stabbed numbers into the phone.

  “Drohobych Import Export,” drawled the bored Russian voice.

  “I have an emergency,” said Rafe hurriedly. “A civilian. I’ve already called 911, the ambulance can’t get through.”

  She took down his information, then severed the connection. Rafe turned around to look at Ram. The doorbell rang.

  Two men in blue jumpsuits were at the door; the one with black plastic glasses, and a second one Rafe didn’t recognize. In moments, they had moved her to a stretcher, hooked her up to a bag of clear liquid, bandaged the hole in her side, strapped an oxygen mask over her face.

  “What happened here?” said the man with the black plastic frames, holding a pen and a clipboard.

  “She shot herself,” said Rafe. “and then I…” he glanced at her, his voice faltered, he lost his train of thought. He didn’t recognize her anymore, tubes everywhere, her face covered by the mask. He swiped at his eyes. “Her name is Tessa Moss. She’s lost a lot of blood. Please, please help her.”

  The man looked Rafe up and down, taking in the blood on his hands, the reddened eyes, the wedding band hanging from the chain around his neck, the slash across his chest. “Why don’t you come along in the ambulance,” he suggested.

  Stashing the clipboard, he turned to his partner. On the count of three, they lifted the stretcher.

  Ram put his hand on Rafe’s arm, stopping him.

  “I’ll go,” he said hurriedly. “She did this so you could be at that meeting. It must be important. Get showered, change into one of your fabulous suits, slap on some cologne. And for God’s sake, get some product in your hair. No one’s going to listen to you looking like that. I’ll stay with Crumpet.”

  Rafe yanked his arm away. “The meeting? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  Ram had been gripping him very tightly; it left a mark. Surprised, he rubbed his bruised forearm, stared at the other man. Ram was Anastasia’s creature; he didn’t even know his last name. Ram, with his pierced tongue, his carefully sculpted goatee, his pencil thin sideburns, his yellow hair, his ridiculous ruffles and 1940s zoot suits. Ram, who was never serious about anything, was dead serious about this.

  “You’re not the only one who cares about her, you know,” he said.

  “You know what? Take the pie safe. Then bugger off.”

  “You’ll come later. After your meeting.”

  The EMTs were waiting. Rafe cursed, then caved. Ram was right; she would want him to go to the sodding meeting.

  Flexing and unflexing his fists, he looked at her. The life in her hair wouldn’t be confined; long, bright curls trailed off the sides of the stretcher, stirred by the breeze coming up the stairs.

  “I hate you for this, you right ruddy bastard,” he said through gritted teeth. “If anything happens to her, and I’m not there, I’ll kill you.”

  He accompanied them as far as the door, gripping the small white hand tightly all the way down the stairs. He watched as they slid her carefully into the back of the unmarked blue van, watched Ram fold himself in behind her, watched the man with the black plastic frames close the doors, shutting his darling girl away from his sight.

  The van pulled away from the curb, heading towards Fifth Avenue. He waited until he couldn’t see it any more.

  He turned around and bolted up the stairs. He had exactly one hour to shower, shave, dress, and get across town; one hour left in which to save the school.

  15

  It wasn’t going well. Though the board members, all thirty of them, had exclaimed over Ben’s Gates of Hell, though they had murmured in pleasure over Gracie’s prowess with a pencil and pretended they weren’t gawking at her bosomy beauty, though Portia had given a speech that was reasonable, resonant, and glowed with promise, though Clayton had told them some wonderful stories as he showed off his centaur, they remained unconvinced. Oh, they clapped, they oohed and
ahhed, they smiled politely and nodded their heads, they were impressed by everything they saw, somebody offered to buy Clayton’s sculpture on the spot, even without a head, but fundamentally, they remained unconvinced.

  First Whit spoke, then Blesser. There were charts, spreadsheets, an overhead projector, a PowerPoint presentation. Letters from various foundations to prove they were just waiting with bated breath for word that the Academy had added the twentieth century to its archaic curriculum.

  Then it was Giselle’s turn. She argued eloquently for keeping the school classical, reminding them of the shivers up their spines they’d experienced the first time they’d walked into the Louvre or the Uffizi, or upon confronting Michelangelo’s David in the flesh. She was followed by the Chairman of the Department of Sculpture, the Chairman of the Drawing Department, and the Chairman of Anatomy, all of whom spoke in defense of keeping the school exactly as it was.

  Initially, Whit had said no to the students’ request for equal time, but a man whose family had made a fortune in disposable diapers wanted to hear them out. By the time Clayton’s last story had rambled to a close, the room was growing restless. Just outside, the student body seethed, wanting in, wanting a say in the matter, but Turner had posted guards at the door to the Cast Hall.

  Giselle and Levon looked grimly at each other.

  “How could he do this to us?” she wondered quietly. She meant Turner. She had given up on Rafe. “I never would have believed it. This school was his baby, too.”

  They both heard it, the sound of a hundred voices joyfully raised at the same time, coming from the corridor outside. Then came the metallic squeal of a steel door, opening and closing. Levon felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise. And smiled.

  Rafe was striding down the aisle between the folding chairs, fedora in place, coattails billowing out behind him.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said breezily.

  Turner’s jaw dropped open. He turned to stare at Blesser, who looked as though he’d seen a ghost. It took him a moment to find his voice. “You’re not on the board anymore,” he said, scrambling to recover his confidence. “You don’t have a vote.”

  “But I am still the founder of this school,” he replied with a friendly smile, staring directly into Whit’s eyes. “And though you are entirely correct, I cannot vote, I believe I am still permitted to speak. May I?”

  Whit dropped his gaze.

  All eyes were on Rafe as he glided around the room, stopping in front of the replica of the Pietà. He took off his hat and smoothed his hair, smiled gorgeously. There was a sudden crossing and uncrossing of many legs.

  Uh oh, thought Whit. His heart sank.

  Rafe’s eyes roamed the crowd, searching for allies, smiling at old friends. Imported fabrics stretched and rustled as the thirty members of the board sat forward. Unexpectedly, a picture of Tessa rose before his eyes, her eyes closed, her face hidden behind an oxygen mask, and his courage faltered.

  How would he even begin? What could he possibly say to undo the damage he had wrought?

  For some reason, he thought of the New Students Party. It felt like a hundred years ago. Fights had broken out after Whit had announced that April would be the new painting teacher. Tessa, wearing that cream-colored macramé shirt, the coffee-colored glass bead like a sucking candy on a tether around her neck. Tessa, her fingers running over the watery green sculpture in the alcove. Tessa, on her knees before him.

  “Many months ago,” he began. “A student asked me a question. ‘What’s a board member?’ she said.”

  They tittered. He smiled as if it were a joke. “I explained how we were responsible for keeping the lights on, for keeping the boiler lit. If it means we have to throw fabulous parties and invite lots of friends and celebrities to get it done, well then, so be it.”

  He was warmed by a wave of laughter. He had them.

  “Veronique,” he said to a woman in a pink and black Chanel suit who had created her own cosmetics line. “Remember when we met? Always the same tired gallery openings, the endless excruciating merry-go-round of oddly-shaped canvases and impenetrable videos.” She nodded her coiffed helmet of brown hair.

  “Holland.” He turned to the right, addressing a man in his fifties who had made a fortune in designer jeans. “Collages made from trash. Rooms filled with mud. Manifestos on the walls to tell us what to feel.” Holland rolled his eyes.

  He began to pace, weaving in and out of the masterpieces along the walls of the Cast Hall. His voice was as smooth as the caress of his fingers along the polished surfaces. At Rodin’s Kiss, he reached out to pass his hand along the female figure’s thigh. The women in the room sighed.

  “Five years ago, the people in this room came together to see that the secrets of the Old Masters live on. Thanks to you and your efforts, they do live on. In our students. Through the prism of their training, our artists can turn an ordinary model posing in an ordinary classroom into a painting that sears the soul, or a figure that might have been sculpted by God. Thanks to you, these techniques, these recipes, these skills, are being passed from our teachers, to our students, to their students. That is how a revolution begins.”

  He stopped to face them. “But perhaps you’re thinking this. Sure, Rafe is charming. Fun at a party. Knows all the pretty girls. But recently, he’s not the same fellow. He’s erratic. Undependable. Distracted.” He waited a beat. “Gotten involved with a student.” Another beat. “You’ve all seen the pictures.”

  There was a murmured undertone of agreement from one quadrant of the room, but he faced it down, his eyes calm and clear.

  “On a personal level,” he continued, “This has been a difficult year for me. I’d like to apologize. First, for any damage I may have inflicted on my beloved school. And second, for any pain I may have caused the people I work with. People whose opinions I treasure. People I care about deeply.” He glanced at Giselle. At Levon, who rewarded him with a warm grin.

  “I am not asking to be reinstated to the board. What I did was wrong, and I accept the consequences of my actions. All I ask is for your vote. That you choose to keep this school in peak running condition for the next da Vinci, the next Rembrandt, the next Raphael, the next Michelangelo.

  “Because he is already out there, my friends, sitting in a dreary, underfunded public school in some dusty little town where they just cut the art program, doodling in his textbooks instead of listening to the teacher, waiting for that blessed day that he moves to New York and finds a place where they will understand him and nurture his God-given talent.”

  His voice was like a beautiful song you strained to remember, because once, a long time ago, it was playing on the radio the first time you were falling in love.

  “It is we who are responsible for the soul of the school,” he said, coming to a passionate crescendo. “What is a board member? It is this, ladies and gentlemen. You are the beating heart of the American Academy of Classical Art.”

  For a moment, the room was still. He had failed to move them, he thought in despair. Acknowledging defeat, he bowed his head, took a step back.

  Someone began to clap. The thirty members of the board burst into thunderous applause. Giselle leapt to her feet, followed by the heir to the cough drop fortune, the baby powder magnate, and then the rest of the people in the room. The sound was deafening, echoing through the vastness of the Cast Hall, bouncing off the vaulted ceiling, reverberating wildly off the mute statues and down the eggplant-colored halls. The students gathered outside behind the steel doors heard it, and began to applaud too, hooting and whistling and stomping their feet. Profoundly moved, Rafe spread his arms wide, the sides of his voluminous coat opening like wings, as if by doing so, he could embrace them all. And smiled.

  In the end, it was close. With the faculty and board members all counted, it was nineteen to twenty-one. The Classicists nearly won.

  Rafe had guessed correctly. He had been too unstable, too unpredictable, and the improvements that could
be made with the promised grant money, too irresistible. Whit gloated with triumph. It had all been for nothing.

  He slipped out the back door, avoiding her friends. In the stairway, he dropped a quarter in the new payphone, called the emergency number on the card. The operator knew nothing about Tessa, nothing about a van or men in blue jumpsuits.

  He hung up, dialed his answering service. A young man with a Southern accent told him a man named Ram had left a message; Tessa was in surgery, he would try again later.

  He hurried home through a cold drizzle, just in time for Ram’s next call.

  She nearly died on the table, he told him. By the time she got to the hospital, she’d lost close to a third of her blood. Feeling faint, Rafe leaned his forehead against the cold surface of the wall. The surgeons recovered two pieces of the silver bullet that perforated her small intestine. The third lay close to her spine, in a nook so risky to penetrate that it was considered safer just to leave it in place.

  She was at St. Vincent’s, in the Village. Rafe slammed down the phone, headed back out into the drizzle, realized he had forgotten his wallet, went back home, went back out in the rain, remembered all over again that it was impossible to catch a taxi in this weather. When he finally reached the hospital, rain dripping off of the brim of his hat, he was told that only immediate family members were being allowed in to see her.

  “But I am immediate family,” he said, without hesitation. The guard looked him up and down, exhibiting a certain amount of disbelief. “I’m her…” and there he stopped. Yes, what was he? Lover. Patron. Muse. “I’m her boyfriend,” he said, wincing at the inadequacy of the word.

  The guard shook his head. Not good enough. Rafe slammed his fists on the desk in rage, splintering the surface of the wood. A police officer started towards him. He put up his hands, palms facing out, backing away. See, I’m not crazy. He would have to find another way.

  He never did get to see her. In the end, her family chose to have her flown back to Chicago. They had warned her that New York was a jungle. They wanted her in a hospital nearby, one where they knew the doctors.