The noises of the room came to him separately: the soaring and diving strings running over the harp of the Vaughan Williams, the hiss of flame from the slightly damp wood he’d set on the grate, the traffic from the street. Finch looked around and saw his life in all of its pieces: his books, the papers strewn across his desk, the still photos on the wall, the globe in the corner fixed to its one perspective, no longer set spinning on its axis now that Lydia had grown up and claimed a place of her own. The room was small and dreary, everything in it insignificant. He had never felt so much loneliness.
He pulled a copy of his catalogue raisonné on Bayber from the bookshelf, flipping through pages until he found what he’d written of Thomas’s work that year.
In 1972, Bayber’s work underwent another metamorphosis, yet refused to be defined by or adhere to any specific style. Elements of abstract expressionism, modernism, surrealism, and neo-expressionism combine with figurative art to create works which remain wholly original and highly complex, both delighting and terrifying at a subconscious level. There is nothing fragile here, nothing dreamlike. No protections are offered, not for the artist himself and not for those viewing his work. All is called forth in a raw state, human values finessed on the canvas, softened and sharpened, separated and made aggregate. While there are certain motifs in these works—often a suggestion of water, the figure of a bird—and various elements are repeated, aside from an introverted complexity, the context in which they appear is never the same from one piece to the next. What ties these works together is the suggestion of loss, of disappearance, and of longing (see figs. 87–95).
The figure of a bird. He had forgotten his own writing. Finch took the book back to his desk and pulled a magnifying glass from the top drawer to study the color plates. Thomas had completed six paintings in 1972, four of them after July. In each of those four, Finch managed to find what he had seen long ago, the figure of a bird. Was it Alice, flown away from him? Or was it meant to be the child?
He looked at each of the paintings prior and could find nothing. But every painting Thomas had done after July of ’72, regardless of the style or subject matter, contained the suggestion, if not the image of a bird. They were often included as hidden objects, rarely in a central role, and in a few instances Finch wondered if he was seeing something that wasn’t really there, only because he wanted to. It reminded him of reading Where’s Waldo? to Lydia when she was eight, his daughter perched on the arm of his chair like a bird herself, scouring the page to find Waldo before he did. Once either of them found Waldo, he was the first thing they noticed when they read the book again, his place in the crowd indelibly imprinted on their memory. Finch found himself looking at Thomas’s paintings the same way now, searching only for the bird and having found it, unable to see the meaning of anything else.
His envy fell away as it often did when he thought of his family, especially since it seemed increasingly likely Thomas’s plea would be a last request. If Finch brought his best efforts to the task of finding Natalie and Alice, he could close the book on this chapter of his life with a clean conscience. He flipped through the rest of the personal correspondence quickly, looking for anything that might provide him with direction. There was nothing. Then, close to the bottom of a stack of bills, he found another envelope of the same size, written in the same hand. There was no return address, but the card had been postmarked in Manhattan, on June 25, 1974. The flap of the envelope had been previously opened, and inside he found another card, this a reproduction of one of Thomas’s more recent works, ironically one of the “bird pictures,” as Finch had quickly come to think of them. The painting was of a man fishing on a grassy shore, his decapitated head resting on the ground beside him, sitting next to a giant kingfisher with a pole between its wings. Inside the card was a color snapshot of Natalie Kessler, holding a dark-haired toddler in her arms.
The child was a girl. There was nothing written on the back, and the photo wasn’t dated. Natalie was standing in front of a tall window, but the background was indistinct and Finch couldn’t make out any suggestion of landscape to tell him where the picture might have been taken. He turned his magnifying glass to Natalie, noting the slight fullness of her face, her long hair, straight and parted in the center, and her clothing—a fringed skirt that looked to be suede and a Mexican peasant blouse. Only the style of clothing had changed; Natalie at twenty-eight did not look much different than she had at seventeen. She had posed in a way to show off her figure, the curves of which had only slightly softened with age. She was still unnervingly attractive, but her expression was cold and distant, even with a child in her arms. Or did she look that way because the child she held belonged to Thomas?
Finch could see the resemblance to Thomas in the little girl. They shared few physical traits other than Thomas’s long nose and eyelashes, but her expression was definitely his: firm, stubborn, intelligent. Loose, dark curls framed a face that was angular, with a high forehead and cheekbones, and a dash of freckles sprinkled across her nose. Her mouth was the same Cupid’s bow as her mother’s, though the little girl’s lips were pursed in frustration. The eyes were pale, with those heartbreakingly long lashes, and she looked directly at whoever was taking the picture. The child knew her own mind. One hand pushed against Natalie’s chest while the other stretched out toward the camera, as if beseeching the photographer to take her away.
Why was Natalie holding the child instead of Alice? Perhaps Alice didn’t know the picture was being taken; perhaps it had been her intention to keep the child a secret from Thomas all along, and it was only Natalie who thought he should know of her existence. But that supposition didn’t mesh with Finch’s mental image of Natalie: her possessive grip on Thomas’s shoulder in the main panel of the triptych, her hard look. He doubted those were details painted from imagination. She seemed more the type Thomas favored: women who were strikingly attractive and aloof, and used to being the center of attention in their own right, already accustomed to the thrum of crowds and the flash of cameras that followed Thomas wherever he went.
Alice, on the other hand, seemed a wholly different kind of creature. The Alice in the photograph was pretty in her own sort of way, with her lean frame and long limbs and the mass of wild blond hair, her eyes as pale as glacial ice. But he suspected the greater attraction would have been in the inquisitive tilt of her head, the keenness in her eyes, the refreshing lack of awareness she seemed to have of her own physical presence.
Alice would have been twenty-three when she had the baby. The Kessler girls had been on their own, with little money to speak of. How could she have raised the child? What would she have done for a living? In his initial Internet searches, Stephen had uncovered a school record indicating Alice left the university shortly after starting her graduate degree work in ecology and evolutionary biology in 1972. He hadn’t found a reason for her abrupt departure, but Finch imagined even in the early seventies, the private Roman Catholic university she was attending would not have continued providing a scholarship to an unwed mother, no matter how intelligent she may have been.
Still, at twenty-three Alice would have been young and strong. She had a college degree; she would have been able to find work more easily than many. Not an easy life, but the world was full of single mothers who had found ways to manage. That was the head of the coin. The tail was a mirror image of the way Thomas lived now—dingy, damp rooms filled with squalor, the choice between spending available dollars on groceries or on heat. Still, in spite of the fact he had never met her, Finch thought of Alice as being responsible and resourceful. As long as the child was healthy, and with a bit of luck and support from her older sister, no doubt things had turned out all right for everyone involved, with the exception of Thomas.
Finch jotted a few notes—questions, primarily—on the pad he kept in his jacket pocket and tucked both of the photographs back inside their envelopes for safekeeping, envisioning Stephen’s reaction when he saw them. The look he imagined on Stephe
n’s face gave him an enormous sense of satisfaction. Maybe an old dog brings something to the mix after all. The prospect of having dinner with Stephen suddenly became much more appealing.
* * *
By the time Saturday arrived, Finch had worked himself into a state. Despite firmly insisting to Stephen that anything they discovered regarding the paintings was not to be made a topic of dinner conversation, he found himself dialing the younger man’s number before he left for Lydia’s. Merely alerting Stephen to the existence of the photos, he reasoned, was hardly the same as showing him the pictures between courses, passing them back and forth under cover of Lydia’s tablecloth. But there was no answer, just the same odd message on his machine: “It’s me. Stephen. Speak after the tone”—the emphasis on after, Stephen had explained, because he found it annoying when people said “at the tone,” which implied the person leaving the message should try to estimate when the beep was going to occur and start talking at the same moment. Finch hung up without leaving a message.
Holiday music drifted onto the stoop from behind Lydia’s door, but when she opened it to invite him in, her face was pale and drawn.
“What’s wrong?” Finch asked, but she only shook her head and put him off, staring nervously into the dining room. He heard the high sound of laughter, a giddy, tinkling bell of a noise, and low conversation. “Is Stephen here already? Am I late? Good grief, has he brought someone with him?”
“No,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “It’s nothing. Let me take your scarf.”
“Lydia?”
“Go on in. I won’t be a minute.”
Finch walked into the living room to find his son-in-law handing a glass of wine to a stranger, a woman whose clothes were all a variation of the same tone, beige, and whose platinum hair was swept up in a stiff swirl around her face.
“Dad!” Kevin exclaimed. Finch thought his enthusiasm was tinged with a touch of nervousness. “I’d like you to meet a colleague of mine from the office. This is Meredith Ripley. She heads up CSR at Brompton Pharmaceuticals.”
“CSR?”
The woman extended her hand. “So many acronyms these days. I can rarely decipher what anything stands for anymore. Corporate social responsibility. I work for the Brompton Foundation, overseeing some of their charitable initiatives.”
“How nice. That must be very . . . satisfying work.” Finch was completely at sea. What was the woman doing here? And where was Lydia?
“Oh, it is.”
An awkward silence followed, during which he swore he could hear every heartbeat, swallow, and thud of pulse coming from those in the room.
“I was thinking, Dad, it would be good for you and Meredith to meet. Lydia and I are such poor company when you talk about art, and Meredith has been looking to expand the work Brompton does in their Arts for the Schools Program. I thought you could give her some ideas.”
Finch glanced at the woman again, this time estimating her age—certainly older than Kevin, but decidedly younger than himself—the absence of a ring on her hand, her own slight look of unease. Lydia and I are such poor company. How dense he’d become. No wonder Lydia appeared distressed. She was likely imagining his reaction.
He arched an eyebrow at Kevin and cleared his throat. “I’d be delighted,” he said. “I know a graduate student who has been looking for an outside project. This sounds like a perfect fit.”
There. Satisfactorily dispensed with. No need to mention all the free time he’d have if he was forced to take a sabbatical. Meredith Ripley pulled back from him slightly, her smile tightening, and he felt a trace of guilt until he recognized that after a moment’s hesitation she, too, seemed somewhat relieved. Kevin adjourned to the kitchen, offering a transparent excuse, leaving Finch alone with the woman.
“Kevin didn’t mention he’d invited me, did he?” She wasn’t going to beat around the bush.
He admired that and was sorry if he’d made her uncomfortable. “It makes no difference. I’m always pleased to meet someone who works with my son-in-law.” It was late to be gallant, but at least no one could fault his manners.
“I have a theory about married people, Professor Finch, having been one myself for quite a time. By nature, they abhor a vacuum. I’m sure your son-in-law meant well. Don’t be too hard on him.” Her smile was warmer now, genuine, and she sounded wistful when she mentioned having been married.
“I guess I’m not used to thinking of myself as single yet,” he said.
“A little over a year since you lost your wife?”
Finch wondered what other bits of his dossier Kevin had thought it appropriate to offer up. “I still feel very married. I imagine I always will.”
“My husband died three years ago. I keep anticipating it will get easier. There are days I only think of him a few times, usually when I’m doing the strangest things. Taking out the trash, sniffing the milk to see if it’s gone bad. Why then, do you suppose? Then there’s the other kind of day, when I don’t want to get out of bed. I’m sorry, I must be making you uncomfortable. It’s just nice to talk with someone who doesn’t offer up the standard condolences. Time is a great healer. You were lucky to have the years together you did. But here I’m presuming you understand and we don’t even know each other.”
“It’s all right. I’ve been on the receiving end of a few of those myself. Were you married long?”
Her eyes were bright, and Finch cursed himself for asking.
“Thirty years. Right out of college. He was a symphony pianist. He proposed to me in the orchestra pit of an empty theater.”
Finch didn’t say anything, only nodded. Her husband had been a romantic. He himself had asked Claire to marry him while standing in front of her favorite painting at the Met, Harry Willson Watrous’s The Passing of Summer. It said a great deal about her, he’d always thought, that she was drawn to a work so quiet on the surface, yet suffused with longing. Tell me why you like it, he’d asked, and Claire had replied without hesitation, as if she’d often wondered the same thing, There’s something wonderfully melancholy about it—the cherries in the cocktail glass, the dragonflies hovering in the air. Such a lovely girl, yet she’s so lonely. It reminds me there are times to be sad, but you should never search for them, or find them too often. He fell in love with her exactly then, the whole of him opening in a way he hadn’t known was possible.
Meredith Ripley was running her index finger around the rim of her wineglass. She looked close to miserable, and Finch wondered if this would be his fate as well: holidays the polar opposite of what they had once been, days so weighted with solitude he’d lie in bed, unable to move.
“If there was an occasion when talking about your husband over coffee with a friend would help,” he said, “I would do my utmost not to resort to meaningless drivel.”
“You’re kind. I’m guessing you’d say that even if you didn’t mean it.”
“I can safely assure you, you’re wrong. Never has anyone accused me of being too kind.”
* * *
He cornered Lydia in the kitchen, where she’d been hiding, but before he could say anything, she rushed at him, enveloping him in a hug. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. If I’m spending too much time here . . .”
“Of course not. Kevin just thought, after our horrible Thanksgiving, both of us seemed so lost without her. I never should have agreed.”
“Lydia, your mother was the love of my life. Not everyone gets to have that. I did. Yes, I miss her, but I’m happier being alone and missing her than pretending not to miss her while being with someone else. Does that ridiculous statement make sense?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then will you try to dissuade Kevin from further matchmaking attempts on my behalf?”
She nodded, though Finch thought she still looked anxious and upset. Stephen was late, and he hoped she wasn’t worrying about him. They pecked at hors d’oeuvres and Finch consumed too many glasses of wine while the four
of them waited, the effort of small talk and feigned interest wearing him down. When Meredith began shredding her cocktail napkin, Kevin convinced Lydia they should go ahead and start dinner. What the devil was keeping Stephen? Candlelight turned the surface of the dining room table into a long stretch of dark water. And even though they were in the same room with him, Finch felt an almost insurmountable distance between himself and those he loved.
When the doorbell finally rang, at eight o’clock, Finch groused in his chops, calling to Lydia as she got up from the table, “If his piece of roast is dry as sawdust, it’s his own fault.” But then he heard his daughter’s gasp and worried exclamations, and she raced past them into the kitchen, returning with a bag of frozen vegetables just as Stephen entered the room.
“What in the world . . .” Finch started, but stopped when he saw the state of Stephen’s face, his lip split, his eyelid drooping, the skin around his socket and cheekbone purpled as a plum.
“I’ve brought little soaps,” Stephen said, sinking into a chair.
“Good Lord, are you all right? Have you been mugged? I’ll call the police.”
Lydia pressed the cold peas against his cheek, and Stephen smiled at Finch while squinting, as if he found the sudden attention pleasing, worth whatever pummeling he’d taken.
“No need,” he said. “Just a misunderstanding between myself and a previous employee of Murchison. We hold different views of what constitutes an emergency. Did you know some people don’t take kindly to one being too detailed over the phone in regard to their specific talents, especially when that call may be being recorded?”
“Are you delirious? You’ve hit your head, haven’t you?”
“Finch,” Stephen said, leaning back in the chair and sighing contentedly as Lydia ministered to his eye, Kevin and Meredith circling in the background. “I know I’m not supposed to say anything now. But after dinner remind me to tell you—we have to go to Tennessee.”
The Gravity of Birds: A Novel Page 22