Life Drawing: A Novel

by Robin Black

  They exchanged a look. “Actually,” Alison said, “I promised Nora a dinner out, with a couple of detours along the way. We’re on our way now … I want to show her the area.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, that sounds wonderful. Perfect. Another time then. Maybe tomorrow night. Why don’t we all have dinner here?” Alison said that they would, and I told them to have fun. I didn’t ask where they were going. I just smiled and waved goodbye at my door.

  How had it not occurred to me that I would feel left out?

  I set to work right away, my go-to response to any such ache.

  On the canvas, the chess game and my living room were vivid. It had been years since I’d painted a space in which I lived, and I was enjoying the process of re-creating my own home in miniature. At heart, I thought of myself as a miniaturist, though my paintings were often of vast landscapes, and even this canvas was three feet high by nearly four long. I had spent hours on the love-seat’s faded brocade, mixing shades so close to each other it was impossible to see any difference, until one became background and the other the pattern woven in. Each stone of our fireplace was like a universe to me, those odd shadows, those irregular shapes.

  To paint a thing had always been a way for me to love it. And I was deep into a love affair with my own home; but not yet with the boys whose occupation of that home, of those pictures, was still only sketchy, who were themselves just blocked-out figures, bare, human-shaped white emptiness.

  While I worked all that late afternoon, my thoughts drifted often to Alison and Nora. When I was actually painting, mixing colors, focused on a small task, I had no room in my head for anything else. But when I stepped away and tried to think through the larger scheme, the concept rather than the execution, my mind wandered to the house on the other side of the hill.

  I tried to recall if there had been any resemblance between them. The eyes maybe? That same startling light gray? How could I not have noticed? But the differences were so overwhelming, the straight-lined body, the hanging blonde hair. All elongated. Nora, a Modigliani of her mother. I drew her, just a pencil sketch on a sheet of butcher’s paper that I kept unfurled to my right. Nora. I wrote it beside the picture, then erased the name, then erased the drawing too.

  Only later did it occur to me that I had sketched a human figure with no self-consciousness, no hesitation, for the first time in many, many years.

  Dinner was stew, thawed from the basement freezer where I stored double portions of everything I cooked in big batches—something I did every couple of months. The giant cooking day. The stew was in honor of the first breeze of fall. It wasn’t cold out, not even close, but there was a noticeably different quality to the air. Owen, after drinking his end-of-day glass of water, inhaled appreciatively. “Excellent choice,” he said. “That was the daughter, I presume? Out there with Alison? The evil ex-husband must be very tall. She has almost a Viking look to her.”

  “I guess.” I ladled stew into our bowls, the same red stoneware we’d had for fifteen years, though we were down to only two from a set of twelve. “She wasn’t what I expected, for sure.”

  “How long a stay?”

  “I don’t know. The long weekend, maybe? A few days? Alison looked happy.”

  “They came by?”

  “Briefly,” I said. “Just for introductions.”

  “Huh.” He sat across from me, ripped off a chunk of bread, dipped it in his bowl. And then we were silent for a while.

  That one week of ease we’d had a month before seemed like years ago.

  “It’s supposed to stay cooler like this for a few days,” Owen said.

  “That’s good. It’s been a beautiful week. Nice for their visit, across the way.”

  “How’s your dad doing? I keep meaning to ask.” He broke off another piece of bread. “No new episodes, I gather?”

  “I spoke to one of the nurses yesterday. I should go back soon. But there’s nothing new. Not really.”

  “I should go with you,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter to him. I promise.”

  “Fucking nightmare,” he said.

  “That’s for sure.”

  After a couple more minutes passed, he asked, “So, what’s Alison like as a mother?”

  “She seems … just as you’d think. Very maternal. Very happy. Beaming.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense. She seems like a motherly type. You see it when she talks about the daughter.”

  “Nora.”

  “Right. Nora.”

  We ate for a few more minutes.

  “Things have changed a lot, haven’t they?” he asked; and for a strange moment I thought he meant between us; but then he said, “Since Alison got here.”

  “I suppose. I don’t know. What do you mean?”

  He frowned. “I mean, there’s obviously a big difference. Since for two and a half years we barely spoke to a soul and now we … we have a …”

  “Neighbor?”

  “Come on, Gus. There are neighbors and there are neighbors. I’m not sure you see how much time you spend with her. How much she occupies your thoughts.”

  I took a bite of stew. “I don’t see the issue here. It’s time when you’re working—”

  “Trying to work,” he said. “Let’s not elevate the activity.”

  “I really don’t understand your problem with her. She doesn’t take away from us.”

  “She doesn’t take away from our time together,” he said. “That’s true. Pretty much.” He stood, refilled his water glass. “Don’t make more of this than it is, Gus. I’m not attacking Alison. I just miss the days when we were out here all alone. There’s a part of me that’s looking forward to when her lease runs out. Except I’m afraid …”

  “What?”

  He turned from the sink and faced me. “Oh, you know,” he said. “How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree? I just hope that when she’s gone, our solitary, rural life is enough for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I couldn’t be any happier with what we have. Yes, I like Alison. I like having her here. And if every two years, a nice person moved in next door for a couple of months, I’m not sure that would be the end of the world.”

  “I’m not blind, or stupid,” he said, sitting down. “It’s been a difficult summer. I just feel … I suppose in a way, I should be glad you’ve had someone to spend time with. I know I’ve been …”

  I reached across the table for his hand. “This will get better,” I said. “I promise you.”

  He looked at me with an expression so familiar I could almost feel it gather across my own face, a combination of disbelief and hope. “I promise you,” I said again.

  “From your mouth to …”

  “I promise you,” I said one more time.

  In bed alone, around eleven, I heard them coming home, laughter slicing the country silence from all the way across the hill.

  Owen was back out in the barn. I had been reading, but after their return, I switched off my light and rolled over to wait for sleep.

  He hadn’t been entirely wrong. I couldn’t quite imagine myself returning to our solitude. Or rather I could imagine it all too well. Alone again in paradise with Owen. And his inability to work. And his need for me to tamp down my own excitement about my work. And his perpetual right to hate me for what I had done—a right he never seemed to exercise, a fact that somehow didn’t make it go away.

  Had I been lonely for years? If I had been before Alison’s arrival, I hadn’t known it. There had been such a feeling of relief when we’d moved. And a feeling of safety. Until Alison brought me companionship and loneliness all at once, a package deal of some mean-spirited sort.

  If Alison had never arrived … If Laine had never stopped being my student …

  The only thing you are allowed to take from an affair is wisdom. You can’t say you are glad you did it or had moments of joy, but you can say that you learned a lot from your mistakes. An
d I did say that—to Owen and to myself. But in truth it was never clear that I had learned enough. After Bill, I spent so much time thinking about regret. Regret and its accompanying conviction that there is a perfect, placid life, one’s own alternate existence, pristine and simple, existing in a neighboring reality in which certain turns in the road were never set upon. And it isn’t true. Any of it. I knew that. I had learned it. But it is an irresistible fantasy, if only because it implies we have some control over our fates.

  Owen came downstairs the next morning an hour or so after me. I was in the studio, but left my paints to join him. It was a cloudy day and in the kitchen, a space that tended toward dark, it could easily have been evening.

  “Good morning,” he said, as I approached.

  “You’re down later than usual.” I sat, keeping my paint-smeared hands and forearms away from the maple table, a local flea market treasure that I had somehow managed not to ruin in nearly three years.

  “I had a visitor last night,” Owen said, turning down the flame under the kettle.

  “What do you mean?” I imagined an animal of some kind. We had a fox once in a while, the occasional raccoon.

  “The daughter. Nora. Alison’s daughter. It turns out she’s a fan. You want tea?”

  “Yes. Wait. I don’t understand.” I watched as he took two mugs off their hooks. “She went out to the barn? She was in the barn?”

  “She’s read my books. After her mother told her about us. She looked me up. And I’m a genius according to her. An inspiration. Underappreciated. Destined to be lauded after my death, you’ll be glad to know.”

  “She couldn’t wait until morning?”

  “By my best estimate, she was at least three sheets to the wind. Maybe four.”

  “Jesus.” I hadn’t seen this coming. Weren’t churchgoing girls a little more reserved than that? “Well, I just hope Alison drove. Assuming she wasn’t also smashed. Was Nora making a pass at you? Was this some kind of move?”

  He shook his head. He poured the water. “No. This wasn’t that.”

  “Don’t sound so disappointed.”

  “I don’t sound disappointed. Because I’m not disappointed. This was more like the impulsive act of a young girl who fancies herself a writer.” He brought over the mugs, then sat across from me and yawned. “Honestly, I don’t know what it was. I just hope the poor girl doesn’t explode from embarrassment when she wakes up. And I hope she doesn’t make a habit of dropping in any time the fancy strikes.”

  “Well, it’s always nice to be admired. And in vino veritas and all. It sounds like sincere admiration.”

  “Oh, it was sincere all right. It was, if anything, a bit too sincere.”

  “I thought you said it wasn’t a pass.”

  “It wasn’t a pass. It was … just very sincere. That’s all. That’s all I mean. It was possibly embarrassingly sincere. Sincere in the way that a reasonable, adult person might regret in the cold light of day.”

  “Well, she’s young,” I said. “She may not yet have a sense of how embarrassing a thing like that should be. She may not even remember it, if she was drunk as all that.”

  “Maybe not,” he said, but in doubting tones.

  “According to a certain extremely hung over young woman,” Alison began as soon as we crossed paths outside that afternoon, “it seems your husband may have had a late night visit from an aspiring author and fan. Needless to say, I didn’t know anything about it at the time. Please apologize on both our behalves.”

  “Oh, he didn’t mind,” I said—which was true enough. I had been more put out than Owen. “He could use a little ego boosting these days.”

  “Well, she wants to die. Of course. Though mixed in there is all kinds of stuff about being thrilled to have met him.”

  I laughed—part of my newly devised strategy for dealing with any crush Nora might be developing. I would make the whole thing out to be a joke. Ridiculous. “Tell her she doesn’t have to die. We’re artists, tell her. We’re old bohemians. We’re used to odd behavior. She didn’t even register on the odd behavior scale. He was very flattered I’m sure. In fact …” I glanced toward the barn as if to consult. “In fact, aren’t we on for dinner tonight? Ten seconds at our house and she’ll know not to feel bad. We’ll all have a good laugh together.”

  “It may take some convincing Nora,” Alison said. “But assume we’ll be there.” She reached out and squeezed my arm. “She’s already been punished with a wicked hangover. Poor thing. Stupid of me to let her get like that. Terrible mothering to let her drink so much.”

  I surprised myself by wondering if there wasn’t some truth to that. “I’ll admit I don’t expect that kind of traipsing from true believers,” I said.

  “That, of all things, is no defense.”

  “I guess that’s right,” I said. “I shouldn’t assume that everyone who believes in God is …”

  “Well behaved?” Alison laughed. “Well, she is, at heart. I mean, I do think the religion steadies her, not that she needs special steadying. But it surely doesn’t mean she never gets drunk and acts idiotic. That would have taken better parenting, not more piety.”

  “Hardly,” I said; though again, I did wonder if she wasn’t right.

  Owen greeted the news that Alison and Nora would be joining us for dinner with mock horror, but I wasn’t convinced that the prospect of an admiring young woman at the table upset him one bit.

  “Why don’t you go put on your most dashing pair of shorts?” I called as he climbed upstairs to take a shower.

  “Excellent idea,” he called back. “The dress cargoes tonight.”

  Life. It begins and begins and begins. An infinite number of times. It is all beginnings until the end comes. Sometimes we know it and sometimes we do not, but at every moment life begins again. Nora. Young. And elegant—shockingly so, something that hadn’t quite come through at our hurried first meeting. Young and elegant with a single pearl in each earlobe, the cross nestled between her collarbones. She wore a simple black sundress. And she was very beautiful, another surprise, as though it were a switch she had turned on since arriving the day before. Green eyes—bright like her mother’s but a different shade. Straight blonde hair, fine and shining, lines of light shifting through it with her every move.

  “I feel like such an idiot,” she said, leaning against our refrigerator. Owen was not yet downstairs. “When I drink I have horrible impulse control and the people who love me have to deal with that, I’m afraid.”

  The people who love me.

  Also the people who don’t, I thought, but did not say. “We all have our shortcomings,” I said, instead. “Anyway, I think you probably made his year.”

  She groaned. “I don’t even remember what I said.” She was playing with a clay palette-shaped magnet from the fridge, an ancient gift from Charlotte. I had to restrain myself from taking it from her lest it somehow break.

  Alison said, “I’m sure you’re far too well brought up to be rude.”

  “I think you just told him nice things about his work,” I said. “There isn’t a writer on earth who wouldn’t enjoy that.” I walked past her, a platter of baked chicken in my hands. “Why don’t you put that magnet back and come sit down,” I said. “We’ll pour some wine and we’ll eat, and you’ll forget it ever happened.”

  Our dining room table, an inherited oval of no particular distinction, came from my childhood home. I had covered it that afternoon with three overlapping cloths, set at angles so some of each color showed: white, then pale gray, and then a dark rose one, on top. And I had gotten out the good china too—which meant an array of mismatched but very fine pieces we had picked up at garage sales over the years. I’d cut wildflowers and set them in green glass jars, one at each end of the table, with half a dozen candles randomly arranged. Long ago, back in the city, I had painted our chairs, also mismatched, all the same shade of dark gray, and lacquered them. They looked like shadows in the candlelight, shadows in sculptural f
orm.

  Stepping through from the living room and seeing it all gave me a flash of great pleasure. It wasn’t often that Owen and I bothered to eat in surroundings that honored the activity. For the most part we sat in the kitchen, which I also loved, but which was dark and hardly celebratory. Or we shared the couch and stared together into a fire. And all of that was good, it was companionable and certainly convenient, but I had almost forgotten the pleasure of giving a room a magical aura like this one now had.

  “This is lovely,” Alison said.

  “Cool chairs,” Nora said. “I love how nothing matches but somehow everything does.”

  “Thanks. I like to think I was shabby before shabby was chic.”

  When Owen appeared, he stopped at the door to take it all in, the table and the three women then sitting at it too. He smiled at me and nodded just once, barely at all, a private tip of his hat to the tableau.

  “No one makes a table like Gussie does,” he said, as he sat.

  “I’ve made baked chicken, nothing fancy, but lots of garlic. And salad. And there’s some bread that’s just the frozen stuff from the grocery store that you throw in your oven but is actually surprisingly good.” As I spoke, I noticed Nora briefly close her eyes and lower her head. “So eat up,” I said. “It’s simple but it’s plentiful.”

  We began passing dishes, and it was obvious even in candlelight that Nora was blushing her way through meeting up with Owen again. She, who hadn’t struck me as the least bit shy earlier, was suddenly bashful and stiffly formal as she apologized to him for her visit. He assured her it had been absolutely fine, but an element of discomfort hung in the air until Alison intervened. “There’s clearly only one way to manage this,” she said. “So we can all move on. Each of us has to tell an embarrassing story about something we did when drunk or otherwise impaired.”

  Owen laughed. “I don’t think we have enough time,” he said. “There was a good two years in there where I mostly made a fool of myself, full-time. Right before I met Gussie. Not that you made a fool of yourself,” he added to Nora. “Anyway, luckily, I’ve forgotten most of those days.”