Fall Love

  Other children would have given up in protest, but Jamal didn't. "I'm sorry I messed it up," he apologized at the end of the class, his head bent, his long lashes sweeping over his cheeks. Perhaps I ought to release him, Althea thought. But she wanted him to finish his drawing, not so much for him, she realized, as for herself. She knelt beside him, her face close to his so that she could speak to him without being overheard, while he stared down at a new, blank sheet of paper. "It's hard with the other children here, isn't it, Jamal?" she asked, and he nodded.

  "My classes are over now. Do you want to come with me to a quiet room where no one will disturb us?"

  "Yes," he said after a pause, and suddenly she worried that she was pushing him too hard. "Are you sure you're not too tired?"

  "No, I'm not."

  He spoke in monosyllables, and Althea wondered if he was afraid of her. But then he faced her solemnly, trustingly, and she felt herself growing excited. "All right, then."

  "I know where we can go," she said, confiding to him once they were in the hall together. She knew she sounded childish, but she couldn't help herself. Mrs. Fontaine wasn't in her office. Althea could tell that the secretary didn't want to give her the key to the lost-and-found room, but she was determined. "There's nowhere else for us to go except inside the principal's office."

  "Well, you can't take him in there," objected the secretary.

  "I know. That's why I want the key to that other room."

  "You'll have to promise that he won't touch anything in there," said the secretary.

  "He won't," said Althea, glancing down at Jamal, who hadn't said a word during this exchange. He was, she thought, positively an advertisement for good behavior. Reluctantly, the secretary surrendered the key. "Make sure you get a note for me from Mrs. Fontaine. I don't want to be responsible."

  A few minutes later Althea unlocked the door to the lost and-found room and switched on the light. It was smaller than a classroom, dusty and chilly. Its single window, looking out on the playground, had bars across it. Discarded textbooks were piled messily on a row of shelves against the wall, and the room was crowded with bric-a-brac. Jamal, unlike most other children, scarcely glanced at the boxes of old clothes and battered toys before he sat down at the child-sized desk and neatly arranged his supplies—pencil and felt-tip pen and a stack of white paper. Without another word, he set immediately to work.

  Althea sat down at the larger desk and prepared to wait. She faced away from Jamal, so as not to pressure him. Outside she could hear the shouts of the children on the playground. She wondered if Jamal felt left out, and stole a glance at him, but he didn't appear unhappy. I should be going over the other children's work, she thought. Instead she stared off into space, and then she closed her eyes.

  He worked so quietly. It was uncanny in a child. She almost forgot where she was. Her thoughts drifted… . Minutes passed, half an hour. Suddenly, she opened her eyes. "How're you doing?" she asked him, and then she could have bitten her tongue.

  She had interrupted his concentration. Startled, he jerked his head up. "I'm going over the pencil lines with magic marker. I don't want to smudge the paper."

  Althea nodded. How serious he was! She felt respect for him. She thought of how adults were so often clumsy with children, barging in on their thoughts, wrecking their dreams. They imposed themselves, ignoring the children's own wishes. She, too, had been guilty.

  Jamal sighed and, carefully capping the felt-tip pen, put it down.

  "Would you like to take a break?" Althea asked. "I wish I had something to offer you to eat, but I only have coffee."

  "I drink coffee at home," said Jamal shyly.

  Althea took out her thermos from her bag and unscrewed the top, and then the cap. Steam rose from the opening. She poured out hot, milky coffee in a styrofoam cup for him. She filled the thermos cup for herself. A smile lit up Jamal's face as his small hand curved part way around the white styrofoam. They sat across from each other, at Althea's desk. She cleared a space, moving her papers to the edge.

  As they sipped their coffee, Althea had the strange feeling that she was sitting across from an adult. Yet Jamal was so small that his head just cleared the top of the larger desk. What an odd, polite, solemn child he was! He drank from his cup gravely. Miss Alexander had told her that Jamal's brother was an artist, and so she inquired.

  "My brother keeps a drawing on his dresser that he did in jail," said Jamal matter-of-factly.

  Althea registered a shock. "What was your brother doing in jail?" she asked, taking care to keep her voice even.

  "He went to the cleaners to pick up some clothes for my mother, and a man came in with a gun, and when the cops came, they picked up my brother, too, because they thought he was with him. My brother was put in the cell with the man with the gun, but my brother said the man with the gun was afraid of him, because my brother lifts weights."

  Was Jamal telling the truth? she wondered, disturbed, her thoughts in a jumble. Either he was, or he wasn't and knew it, or he was repeating what had been told to him. She felt upset. His disclosure, followed by her automatic skepticism, reinstated the divide between them that earlier had seemed to dissolve in the magical atmosphere of art. She wanted to reinvoke that atmosphere. She wished she hadn't asked Jamal about his brother. It's none of my business, she thought.

  During her years of teaching, she had heard other children nonchalantly reveal shocking details of their private lives, but she had never gotten used to it. She repressed her curiosity with a horror of prying.

  She finished her coffee and asked Jamal if she could see his drawing. Together they examined it—a scene of outer space. There was the round, looming earth, and, circling it, a smaller moon, a flying saucer, a rocket, stars, and an amoeba-like object that Jamal explained was a comet. Among these satellites was the rabbit, his hind legs outstretched, lines of motion indicating his flight. He had perky ears and a cottontail.

  Looking over the sheets of paper Jamal had rejected, she saw how many times he had worked out the placements of the objects. His drawing clearly was influenced by cartoons, but his feeling for space was just as clearly a talent. Since the drawing was to be photocopied, it couldn't be shaded, but the whiteness suggested the black void of space where the astronaut piloted his rocket confidently, the flying saucer whirled mysteriously, and the rabbit leaped triumphantly over the round world.

  "I like it," said Althea. "It will do very well."

  Jamal nodded. He gave her the empty styrofoam cup and sat back down to work. Now she observed him, and he made no objection. He hardly seemed to notice that she was there, so intent was he in carefully guiding the black felt-tip over the pencilled lines.

  Althea felt privileged to watch. She sensed the rareness of the moment—she had become the student and he the teacher. She had much to learn from him, she reflected, from his diligence, his quiet confidence. At the same time, thoughts of Jamal's brother troubled her. It made her sick to think that this beautiful child, with all his talent, might one day be caught in the same trap as his brother. How could she help to prevent it?

  I'm being presumptuous, she thought. But Jamal has not only the talent but—what is rarer—the temperament for an artist. If he's interested, I'll try to get him art lessons. It's as much for the encouragement he'll get as for what he'll learn.

  While Jamal finished his drawing, Althea was consumed by plans and strategies. She remembered an umbrella arts organization whose offices were on the Upper East Side—they'd have information about after-school and weekend programs for children. She decided that first she'd investigate the possibilities, and then she'd approach Mrs. Fontaine and Miss Alexander. As a white person coming into the school from the outside, I'm in a delicate position, she reflected. It's absolutely necessary to go through established channels. I can't approach Jamal's mother directly. I have absolutely no idea what kind of person I'd be dealing with. My interference is likely to be resented. What is important is that Jamal shouldn't re
sent it.

  She waited until he was done. It was with a slight reluctance that he surrendered the drawing to her. "I might think of something else later," he said.

  "I'll keep it safe for you," she promised. "You can look it over next week before I give it to Mrs. Fontaine."

  "Don't let anybody mess with it."

  "I'll take it home with me. I'll guard it with my life, Jamal."

  He barely smiled as he said, "Okay." He watched her as she carefully placed the drawing between blank sheets of paper in a folder. As she escorted him back to his class, she asked him if he'd ever taken art lessons outside of school.

  "No."

  "Would you like to?"

  His nose wrinkled as if he were about to sneeze, but he didn't. "Would I get to use paints and all different kinds of supplies?"

  Althea nodded.

  "Then I'd like to," he said.

  He's given me permission, Althea thought. "I'll see what I can do," she said.

  When she left the school, she felt buoyed by purpose, as if she were walking on air. She had stayed so late that classes had been dismissed, and she passed her third-grade girls just inside the playground fence. They waved to her, and she waved back. She didn't see Jamal.

  She paused at home only to drop off the children's drawings, Jamal's among them. Restless, excited, not even stopping to open her mailbox, she decided to go directly to the CAPS offices—City Artists Public Services. She'd never been there before, but knew by hearsay that they had a good library and files of listings about artists' programs, opportunities, and events.

  The offices were squirreled away in the back rooms of a mansion south of the Guggenheim Museum. Like the equivalent of a maid's room in a fancy apartment, Althea thought. File cabinets crowded the narrow hallway that connected three irregularly shaped rooms. The furniture was institutional: metal desks and molded plastic chairs. Althea mentioned her errand to a woman younger than she, with blonde hair and a shiny complexion, wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt. Althea was lucky, for soon she was seated at a table, transcribing a list of art programs for children. She discovered that there were two in Harlem, and one was less than a mile from the school, at the Studio Museum on 125th Street.

  She copied down the information quickly, for the CAPS offices were about to close. Half an hour after she had arrived, she was gone. Outside it was dusk. Instead of heading toward the crosstown bus stop, she began to walk down Fifth Avenue. She passed doormen in uniforms, standing next to the entrances of apartment buildings. The evening air was cool and fresh, and the doors of several buildings stood ajar. She caught glimpses within of lit marble lobbies. The citadels of the rich are deceptively open, she thought. Men in suits and topcoats, carrying briefcases, passed her in the opposite direction, returning home from work. She saw elegant women in high heels, overdressed for the weather in fur coats, waiting for taxis. Blocking her path, two children of privilege bounced a fuzzy yellow tennis ball between them on the sidewalk. It was as if the city were unfolding before her as she moved through it. It occurred to her that, though she had lived in New York for four years, she still felt like a visitor, an observer, no matter what neighborhood she found herself in, even her own. That's what she had wanted, why she had moved to New York—to have the possibility of new worlds constantly opening up to her. But now she missed a feeling of belonging.

  Lost in her musings, Althea was distracted by the sight of a row of cabs pulling up at the intersection in front of her. She saw that she was walking next to the Frick Museum. As she approached the corner, she noticed a crowd of people gathering at the 70th Street entrance to the museum. On a whim, she joined them.

  Two guards in uniforms stood beside the doorway as the people filed in. Inside the entrance, another guard seated on a stool collected a printed invitation from each person. Yet Althea was inexplicably let past, as if she were invisible. No one seemed to notice that she didn't belong. She felt thrilled, curious, a guest at a party she hadn't been invited to. The Frick Museum itself was as familiar as an old friend. She loved its collection and knew it well, but she had never seen the museum at night, never known it as the setting of an event.

  She had no idea what event it was. She checked her coat along with everyone else. People were wandering into the interior courtyard of the museum, and she followed them. A table had been set up, and a bartender was filling glasses with white wine. She decided against a drink, and drifted into the north hall as a few others were doing. Then she entered a room off to the left.

  She was in the library, and three other people were in there, too. A tall, older woman, dressed in a tweed suit, with a severe, impressive face and red-orange hair piled high on her head, was holding forth to her companions, a shorter, meeker couple, who were watching her with pale, rapt expressions. Her loud, clipped, British voice carried clearly to Althea across the room. She was pointing out a portrait to her friends.

  "I come here often, especially to see Lady Hamilton," she was saying. "Do you know the story about the artist? Romney had been painting portraits of the aristocracy when Lady Hamilton came to London, whereupon he stopped to paint seventeen portraits of her. Ten of the seventeen are in poor condition, but we're lucky, for this one is in excellent condition." She paused to admire the painting she was praising. "Lady Hamilton's my most favorite. I rarely see a woman with an expression like that. Have you ever seen eyes like that that melt men's hearts? If you looked at her five minutes, you'd give her your last dime."

  Soundlessly, Althea approached behind them, wanting to see the painting that she had always passed by in the past. She saw a smiling young woman with a soft, tilted face, dark, soulful eyes, a loosened bodice, and flowing hair. In her arms she held a spaniel. The rendering was facile and entrancing.

  The woman that the red-headed woman was speaking to murmured in approbation, while the man peered closely at the painting. "The dog's eyes are wonderful, too," he proclaimed. The British lady opened her mouth and then shut it without speaking. It was clear to Althea that she was displeased. Then, proceeding, she stopped before a portrait of Washington. The couple followed. "It looks as if his teeth are in in this one," the British lady said acidly. "And there's Lady Peel," said the other woman. "Wasn't she the wife of the Prime Minister?" "Sir Robert," supplied the man.

  "And that's Mr. Frick," said the British lady, glaring at the large portrait, over the fireplace, that dominated the room. "I don't want to see him. He was one of those awful millionaires."

  She glanced at her watch. "Come, we'll be late for the lecture." Magisterially, she swept out of the room, her two in tow, leaving Althea alone and still, apparently, invisible.

  As if on cue, the lights were extinguished in the library, except for a squat table lamp with an embroidered shade under which a bulb gleamed dimly. Through the doorway Althea saw people milling in the court, setting down their emptied glasses on the table, and heading toward the lecture hall. No one came into the library. She couldn't hear a sound.

  The curtains were drawn back. A meager light from Fifth Avenue entered the room. Althea went to the windows. Cars and pedestrians were going by, as usual. She saw a runner speed soundlessly by in sleek fluorescent-green tights. Very quietly, Althea went through another door that led directly into the next, still-lit, gallery. These paintings, well-known to her after years of visits, had never appeared more wonderful, more mysterious. She felt the surprise that only the very familiar is capable of engendering.

  She paused before one of her favorites, a figure in a landscape: St. Francis in the Desert, by Giovanni Bellini. This is a desert humanely conceived, thought Althea, with water flowing nearby, acacia and olive trees, a town across a river, and in the distance terraced fields climbing a hillside with a castle at its crown. Nature is either tamed—a donkey, a shepherd with a flock of sheep—or else unthreatening—a heron, a hare. The saint has turned away from the entrance to his sheltering cave, where he has been meditating at a reading table with skull and book, and he is ga
zing ecstatically skyward. But there are no angels, no messengers of God to be seen. Instead, Althea reflected, here is God as nature, and nature tempered by man.

  Perhaps Bellini means us to believe that St. Francis is witness to a vision of God which is invisible to us, the viewers, she speculated. She reflected how, in her art, too, an imagined nature was paramount, but her paintings had no narrative, no religious context. To paint a Renaissance painting in the twentieth century would be impossible, she decided. That universal world view has been lost. Such a painting today would be considered a joke, or worse. Yet she thought that in her paintings she also wanted to convey a radiance, like a spiritual quality embodied in nature, indefinable, yet permeating it.

  Glimmers of ideas hovered in her thoughts, too faint as yet for her to give shape to. She turned away from Bellini's painting and went ahead into the next room. This was the Fragonard Room. Around her hung a series of panels, representing The Progress of Love. She had seen this room before in bright sunlight, the gilt of the ornate furniture gleaming, the pastel colors of the paintings glowing to full advantage. Even so, she had never truly cared for the paintings. They were too theatrical, too artificial. Their scenes were set in gardens that were like stages ringed with ambiguous low walls over which the pursuing lover clambered by means of a ladder or by more mysterious aids. Abundant flora framed the lovers, huge sweeps of dense foliage and festoons of roses claimed much of the scene and, Althea thought, seemed its true extravagance. Under the arching boughs were statues which overlooked the stereotyped poses of the lovers. It occurred to her that the statues, painted in monochrome, were more lifelike than the human figures, their gestures more natural and moving.