by Pat Rosier
Walking on Sixth Ave in the rain with her umbrella bobbing in a sea of umbrellas is a challenge. It takes a jagged, pumping, perpetual vertical motion to avoid eye-gouging collisions. For once it might be an advantage to be short. After a hundred metres—yards—Ann puts up the hood on her parka and jams the umbrella into a rubbish—trash—bin—can.
*
Ann is in MOMA, The Museum of Modern Art—she likes the nerve of that, the New Yorkish nerve of being The museum of …—, standing in front of the huge Les Demoiselles D'Avignon. A monumental work in every way, one with which Picasso, it is said, revolutionised the art world.
She’s looking hard into the painting, thinking about its special significance, concentrating on the fractured body shapes, the African-mask look of two of the faces, the blade-like slice of melon among the fruit at bottom centre, the splintered planes of the curtain-folds. Absorbed in study, fascinated by the way the flat painted shapes jut out towards her instead of receding away, she all-at-once is there, in the painting. Her right elbow shoots up, hand falling behind her head. Her left leg moves across in front of the right. The other hand clutches at the bottom of her jacket. She is the one second in from stage left, off centre, looking directly out of the canvas, eyes wide and knowing.
The room, the building, the city fade away. She is the future of painting, she and her four companion demoiselles. They, Barcelona prostitutes, are determining what will come, taking art into realms never before known. The paint that is her skin makes angles, her eyes, unblinking, direct artists' eyes to what has previously been hidden. She is in a state of serious bliss. Wordsworth is there.
………by the power
Of harmony and the deep power of joy
We see into the life of things.
Later, how much later she can’t tell, Ann returns to herself in a slow fade. She feels her flesh melting away from hard angles to its usual rounded-ness. Her arm falls to her side, and she’s rubbing the stretched muscle. As the hand clutching the bottom of her jacket unclenches, she automatically feels for the shoulder bag sitting at her hip. She can feel the solid floor through the soles of her shoes. No-one seems to have noticed her, um, transformations. Slowly she leaves the building, not allowing questions to ask themselves, cradling the experience in her mind, holding any thoughts about what has happened at a distance.
Then she is walking along Fifth Avenue, window-shopping, people-spotting, feeling invisible—a different way of feeling from engaging with the demoiselles. No-one here knows her, or wants to. All anyone wants is for her to be out of their way. It’s a good feeling.
She had planned to leave the Met for another day, but it’s right there and only two in the afternoon. There’s a special Exhibition, “Vermeer's Masterpiece: The Milkmaid.” She thought it was a small painting, like the Mona Lisa. Oh, that image on the wall is a digital reproduction, made large to show off Vermeer’s technique. Never mind that, she wants the real thing, the actual painting. There aren't many people, that’s good. Ann tells her body to behave itself and walks into the room where The Milkmaid is hanging. She stands as close as the barrier will allow, and looks and looks.
A woman, an earthy, peasant woman, is pouring milk from a jug into a bowl. There are a few other things about: a table, a loaf of bread, a stool-like object on the floor, a window lighting up the woman and the pale wall behind her. The woman's skirt is blue. Ann knows that blue to be lapis lazuli and it is a beautiful, dense colour that you could fall into. A small group comes close to her and she stands aside so they can see, then goes back to her position directly in front of the painting. It is more than beautiful, it’s perfect. The woman’s hand is underneath the jug, steadying it as she pours, and the whole picture, the light, the figure, the colour, is perfectly balanced, in an ineffable calm; a living calm, light bouncing around within the canvas from small daubs of paint overlaid on each other, capturing the light within itself.
A sight so touching in its majesty
Not that Wordsworth was dwelling on anything as humble as a maid pouring milk. But still. Eventually, she tears herself away, goes around them all, the five Vermeers from the Met's collection and some accompanying contemporaries. Nothing captivates Ann in the way of The Milkmaid. As far as she can tell, only one work in the whole exhibition is by a woman. In that, a kitchen maid is cooking, turned away from the viewer, getting on with the job.
Ann’s attempts to get Evelyn to talk about family are unproductive. “Once I lost any faith I had absorbed from the parents, which I did around twelve, and said so, probably with no regard to their feelings, it was all downhill,” she says. “Sister Shirley and brothers John and Rob were elsewhere. End of story, no regrets. I knew as soon as I got to New York this was where I belonged. Still do.” She wants to hear what Ann has been up to in her city. Ann leaves out her encounter with the demoiselles. An enquiry about Evelyn’s working day gets the same short shrift as the family. “Same old, same old. Writers cling to every precious line—understandably, as they get paid by the word—publishers go for slash and burn.” Then she gossips about Jerry, the theatre-buddy who has just had his heart broken by yet another blond.
“Poor darling,” says Evelyn without a trace of sympathy, “he will go for young and beautiful and they never last. He won't let me say ‘blond boys,’ swears he hasn't had anyone under thirty for years.” While she speaks, Evelyn is clearing away the trays they'd perched on their knees with the delicious Asian food that was delivered to the door. Ann managed to pay, and then got embarrassed about a tip. “Keep the change,” Evelyn calls out. Four dollars.
Jerry is tall, with blond streaks disguising the grey in his hair, a black roll neck jumper, chinos and smart shoes.
The street is even more crowded than in the daytime, people now largely in pairs or groups. It looks as though the whole of Manhattan is going out.
“Jude Law in Hamlet doesn't seem like off-anything to me, why is it off-Broadway?” Ann asks Jerry as they walk, but his reply is lost in the noises around them. What the hell, expensive tickets, off- or not, and this is fun.
Ann has to agree that Jude Law is gorgeous, but she thinks he’s too certain about himself, too heroic to be a brilliant Hamlet, in spite of his fantastic acting. She gets up the courage to express an opinion and is gratified when Jerry and Evelyn nod agreement. The two of them launch into a discussion about the director, and Ann looks around, trying to imagine herself a New Yorker, at home in this milieu, at ease with all the ways of doing things, like finding their seats in the theatre and ordering drinks in this bar. On the short walk here every second person was walking a well-behaved dog on a lead. It looked as though they—the dogs—were trained to do their business in the gutter, and everyone carried a bag for the doings. She wonders where all the homeless people she remembers from past conference-driven visits have gone, but this doesn’t seem like the time to ask. Maybe the homeless have morphed into pedigree dogs. Stop it! she tells herself silently, you need sleep, that’s all.
*
Sunday brunch is happening in a full and chaotic deli off Sixth Ave and Ann can see why Evelyn wanted them to be there before ten. The food involves scrambled eggs and smoked salmon—“lox,” Evelyn insists—and is delicious. Ann is gazing around at the crowd, when Evelyn says,
“I had a relationship with a woman.”
“What?” She has Ann's full attention.
“Four years. It was good, until the end.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing, well at least nothing different. That was the point, really. She wanted a baby and to live in the suburbs, I wanted this life and to stay living here. She called me selfish, I called her stupid, and that was it. She did it all with a man in the end, even invited me to the wedding, to which I didn’t go. I haven't had anyone since, though I think I could go either way.”
“Gosh. How long ago?”
“Six years. I'm well over it, but I don't want to do it again, really, not with anyone. I feel tired just thinking
about swapping life stories, all that stuff, all over again.”
“Oh. I'm sorry. Did Mum—Shirley—tell you … ?”
“You mean you, woman, breakup? Yes. She said you might be sad, upset, something like that. You seem all right to me. Are you?”
“Pretty much.” Ann tells her about Ex leaving and losing her job and running away, leaving her father to deal with the house.
“Not that he minds, he loves that sort of thing. I left yellow post-it notes everywhere on the stuff I want, not that there's much.” Ann has barely thought about her house since she left New Zealand. She doesn’t want to bring it all back by talking about it. “I love being in New York, but what's it like living here, all the time, for years and years?”
“Fabulous. Hard. Too hot in summer, frigid in winter. It gets under your skin, though. I can't imagine living anywhere else, but I won't be able to afford to stay if—when—I stop working. Might have to come back to enzed. Ha! I might even prefer New Jersey. You know, I can't be thinking about that. Can you walk?”
“Walk? Yes.”
“I mean for a couple of hours. Central Park.”
“Yes. Definitely. For sure.”
“Come on then.”
The six blocks to the park are interesting in themselves, an odd mixture of gentrification, empty shop fronts, a bewildering variety of people and the dog-walkers.
“Relationships,” says Evelyn as they walk, “I never really got them. Did you watch Seinfeld?”
“Some, not much.”
“If you want to understand New York, well, at least the New York I live in, watch it. It's the friends thing, you know, the people you hang out with. Like being an adolescent in a way. Anyone who gets settled in a relationship, unless they are rich, and I mean really rich, moves to the suburbs, especially if they're into rugrats.”
“Rugrats?”
“Children.”
“Oh. Children?”
“Yeah, you can't have children and live on Manhattan unless you’re loaded. People go to New Jersey, so help me, to have kids. Or Connecticut. And say they like it. I suppose they have to.”
They’re passing Bryant Park. An elderly Chinese man sits on a stool by the entrance playing a single-stringed instrument with a bow. The high, haunting sound of it cuts through the other noises of the city: the cars, the sirens, the general hubbub. Ann hears the notes before she can see where they come from. She drops some coins into the cap on the footpath—sidewalk—by his foot, then has to run a few steps to catch up to Evelyn. She feels as though she’s in a movie. A foreign movie. New York is kind of familiar and also very, very strange. She can only think of the clichés: edgy, fast, people looking like they’re on speed, politely spoken, saying “excuse me” even if they only almost-bumped you, but quick, purposeful, on their way. Exotic, exciting, exhausting and thrilling.
Evelyn walks at a fair pace, which keeps them warm. Ann enjoys walking, watching, ducking and diving around people. And those dogs.
Then they are in Central Park. Evelyn strides right on past the pond, heading somewhere in particular.
“I want to show you something.” Clearly. Some trees are bare, others hold on to a few dying leaves. It’s a still day, but Ann is surprised at the uncluttered paths. Plenty of ground staff to clear away fallen leaves, no doubt. Beautiful lawns. People sitting reading, a paper or a book or a screen, hampered by gloves, festooned with scarves. Some have white or black cords coming out of their ears, some are apparently talking to themselves, but probably not; if Ann looks carefully there’s a tiny phone mic on the earphone cord.
“Here we are. Look.” There’s a round pond, an angel on a fountain, a terrace, people sitting and standing around, some in boats on a lake beyond. “This is my favourite place in the park. I often come here at the weekend with the paper when it’s warm. Oh, Look! Quick!” Someone is leaving a bench and Evelyn darts over, making her claim seconds before two men who veer away, looking like cats when they make out they never wanted the morsel you didn't offer them. Of course I wasn't after that silly seat.
People are so polite. Kind of indifferently polite, but it makes for a sense of safety. Ann is certain she'll not get much of a response if she tries to start a conversation, but the sense is of pleasantness. Where are the homeless she wonders again. You’d expect, with the financial meltdown, mortgage foreclosures and job losses, that there would be more homeless people.
“Moved on,” says Evelyn, “moved out.” That’s it, she doesn’t know any more. Doesn’t want to know any more, Ann thinks, and doesn’t press the matter. It’s too cold to sit for long. Too cold for snow, according to Evelyn. “Wisconsin,” she says. “I’ve never been there, but it got snow today apparently. Come on, we’ll head back.”
*
Wassily Kandinsky has not been one of Ann's art history favourites, but the big retrospective at the Guggenheim is being made much of and she doesn't want to regret missing it, so she goes on her last full day in New York. Starting at the bottom, she makes her way slowly up the spiral that is the gallery, following the artist’s move to abstraction, revelling in the patches of saturated brightness, the relationships of colour and lines. In a side gallery of works on paper Klee and Miro jostle in her mind with the works on the wall and she smiles her way around the room, enchanted.
From the top she works her way back down, stopping in front of some paintings, wandering right past others, enjoying the art-work that is the building as she goes.
Ann stands for a long time at Composition 8, July 1923. Looking into the painting feels like being in New York, out in the street, or the park, in it, not completely of it. Then she is wholly there. Not immersed in the painting exactly, but in it, feeling herself as a speck, traversing the lines, floating in the colours, being, in an inexplicable sense, pure being. She is also aware of her actual body, standing in front of the painting, not taking up any particular shape, just standing there while this tiny other self moves within the frame, a slight shimmer on the surface of the paint as she negotiates the colours and angles, lines and shapes, in pure experience. Uplifting. The movement is taking its own time, going at its own pace, she has a sense of panic that she will not be finished—whatever finished is—before someone comes along and interrupts. Figures move in and out of her side vision but none intrude fully until she has in fact completed the painting—all the lines walked, (but walking’s not the right word) all the colours taken into herself. Then, suddenly, like a switch turning off, the surface of the painting is still and she is aware of other people and herself standing slightly to one side, looking at the painting from an angle, as in the Emily Dickinson poem about the truth, and telling it slant. Wasn’t she standing directly in front of the painting earlier? She continues on her way down, quiet in her mind, and out into Fifth Avenue, walking until she finds a way into Central Park. Back at the Bethesda Fountain, she sits and eats a sandwich. Pastrami on rye, because that's such a New York kind of sandwich.
Entering into paintings is exhilarating while it’s happening and she feels peaceful and satisfied afterwards. But should she be worried? Is she having a breakdown, as they say, fragmenting into madness? A definite no. Strange, but all right, she decides, a trick of my mind. Not an academic interpretation, more a visceral experience. She likes “visceral” and says it out loud to the hopeful pigeon pecking at the ground by her feet. “Best not to talk about it,” she tells the pigeon. “The last thing I want is other people's explanations. It can be mine, all mine.” She likes that, a total immersion experience, belonging only and wonderfully to her.
Evelyn is finishing work early today, to take her across the river to Brooklyn on the subway, so they can walk back to Manhattan across Brooklyn bridge in the twilight, and watch the lights of the city come on.
“Don’t go to the Twin Towers site,” Evelyn had advised, “It’s gross, what they’re doing there. I’ll show you the gap in the skyline from the bridge.” She refuses to talk about That Day, says far too much has already been
said, and was still being said, most of it rubbish, “Which is what the towers were reduced to.”
It’s a longer walk across the bridge than Ann has expected, and spectacular. The views of Manhattan are magical in the half-light, gradually illuminating themselves from the inside. She and Evelyn face the mass of people walking and cycling home in an orderly stream above the road traffic.
As they walk, Evelyn says she is glad to be back in touch with her sister. “I effectively don’t have any family, at least not here,” she says. “And it’s thin over there. Like many in this town, I’ve gotten used to getting by without.” She hopes she'd sent flowers to her parents’ funerals—family by interflora—and no, she isn't lonely. She has buddies, not just Jerry, girl-buddies. “Like on Friends, though not as well scripted.” Ann realises too late she was meant to laugh.
The email from her father begins, “Hi Honeybunch, well your dear old dad has been and gone and done it. You don't own any of that house any more.” There’s a lot of detail about price, a good one in spite of the state of the housing market, and Ex agreeing to everything on cost of chattels (guilt, Ann thinks). She skims through it all. “And Mum and I have organised for all your things from the house to come here, we've cleared out the spare room for them, you left such good lists, it's all very simple. And Mum had the bright idea of getting some boys from student job search to help on the day, so don't worry about us lifting and carrying all those boxes of books.” Ann remembers walking around the house making those lists, feeling abject, not really caring what she put on them. Now, she stares at the sentence, “You don't own any of that house any more,” feeling it etch into her brain. Homeless. Jobless. Her stuff at her parents’ house. Like a teenager, she says to Evelyn over their last meal together, late, at a nearby café.