Art's Blood

by Vicki Lane

  “So what kind of stuff are you learning in that class?”

  Elizabeth took a sip of her beer. “Lots. We’re doing basic drawing and mixing colors and we’ve started a simple still life. But it seems to me that what we’re really learning is how to see things. Like, for example, learning to draw what you see rather than what you think you already know.”

  The little bell that sometimes rang in her head was dinging softly, This isn’t just about drawing, but she went on. “Daphne says that it’s hard to get over our preconceptions— as children we learn the trick of drawing a house, a tree, a face, whatever, and we have to discard that and draw the actual thing we’re looking at. She gave us each a picture of a table with a jar on it to copy but we had to turn it upside down— that way we were copying the shapes we saw rather than our preconceived idea of a table and a jar.”

  “That’s pretty cool.” Ben’s comment trailed over his shoulder as he headed for the kitchen for more fajitas.

  “It really is. And she talked about how artists express themselves through their work sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously. And critics have a field day deconstructing their work and reading all kinds of stuff into it. But the most interesting concept to me was something she called ‘incubation.’ A psychologist named Getzel came up with this term. It’s kind of like you gather all this information and think it over, then you have to try to let go of it: she said you have to let go of certainties and turn on the intuition, the— how’d she say it?—‘the global thinking at the core of creativity.’ ”

  “Sounds kind of like making compost.” Ben’s face was solemn. “You pile together a bunch of shit, stir it around, then go away and wait. Eventually all that shit turns into good useful stuff.”

  Elizabeth sighed. “A rather inelegant metaphor for the creative process, Ben. Thank you for sharing.”

  “Hey, Aunt E, compost is great stuff— the other ‘black gold.’ I appreciate compost a lot more than some of the crap these so-called artists turn out.”

  * * *

  She lingered over her coffee long after Ben had said good night. A CD by Yo-Yo Ma was playing and she sat, dreamily listening to the music, feeling the resonant sweeps of the bow on the cello strings wiping her mind clear of all worry, all thought.

  When Yo-Yo Ma gave way to Béla Fleck, Elizabeth drained the last of her coffee and leaned down to retrieve the napkin that had slid from her lap. There at her feet, wedged upright behind the baseboard, was a tarot card— the Fool, she saw, as she pulled it from its hiding place.

  * * *

  It had been on one of the nights that Willow and Aidan had stayed at the farm. After-dinner conversation had lagged and Willow had insisted that she would read the cards for each of them. They had assembled at the table, Elizabeth, Laurel, and Ben, dubious but polite, and Aidan, openly scoffing. Willow had ignored her son’s protests and produced a silk-wrapped rectangle from one of the deep pockets in her flowing skirt.

  “The silk protects the cards from discordant vibrations,” she had explained in her characteristic lilt as she reverently laid aside the fabric and fanned the deck on the table. “First I’ll choose a Court card to represent each of you. Elizabeth, for you, I think, the Queen of Swords.”

  Willow had explained each choice at some length and had gone on to say that she preferred the ancient Celtic method of laying out the cards. There had been the pattering and shuffling of the cards, the cutting “with the left hand and three times to the left.”

  It had been intriguing, Elizabeth thought, looking at the card that had been left behind, her card. Willow had read for Elizabeth first— a formal litany of “this is behind her, this is below her,” covering all aspects of past, present, and future. The pronouncements had all been rather generic, Elizabeth remembered. Except for the was it the Eight of Swords? That was ahead of me and she said it signified imprisonment— actual or mental— the fear to make new choices.

  And then, of course, there was this card, her last one. “This will signify the final outcome,” Willow had intoned as she turned over the card at the top right-hand side of the pattern.

  Ben and Laurel had burst into raucous hoots of laughter at the sight of the Fool— a cheerful young man followed by a little dog. The young man was looking up at the sky and had one foot poised to step off a precipice.

  “That’s you, all right, Aunt E. Except there should be three dogs.” Ben had continued to chortle even as Willow carefully explained that this card represented a choice to be made— a choice that could involve a leap of faith.

  “Go on and do mine next. I’m ready to go to bed.” Aidan had shoved his Knight of Cups card to the center, pulled together the other cards and shuffled and cut them with practiced speed. Willow had quirked an eyebrow but said nothing as she began to lay out the pattern again.

  It was so strange. She kind of raced through his reading. I remember there was the High Priestess and she said that was a good card for artists…and another card that was upside down and lots of swords cards…and then…

  And then Willow had reached out, scattering the brightly colored cards, breaking the pattern. That’s how the Fool ended up under the table, I guess.

  “The cards aren’t responding,” Willow had proclaimed. “Perhaps another night will be better.” The lilting accent had disappeared and her tones were harsh.

  But the next night, Willow and her son had been gone.

  * * *

  Strange folks. I wonder… Elizabeth stared at the card in her hand, pondering, half seriously, what its message for her might be. The young man on the card smiled enigmatically, one foot poised over eternity.

  At last she yawned. “Time for bed.” She went to cut off the CD player, then came back to the table for her cup. With the loud banjo music stilled, she could hear the metal wind chimes on the porch playing a rowdy jangling tune and, in the distance, a loose piece of tin on the old barn roof clashed a rhythmical accompaniment. The wind had risen and the dark crowns of the trees at the foot of the front yard were whipping wildly back and forth. As Elizabeth stared out the dining room window, the trees seemed to take on the shapes of tall, mournful women: weeping, wailing, and flinging up their long arms in hopeless despair.

  A sudden crack of lightning lit the sky and a long, ominous roll of thunder announced the coming storm. A few big drops began to spatter on the deck, followed immediately by a deluge. Elizabeth was already on her feet and headed for the front door when frantic barking and scratching told her that Molly and Ursa were back. She let them in immediately and went for towels. Molly, terrified as usual by the thunder, shivered and whined while Elizabeth dried her, but Ursa simply settled into a wet heap on the floor to wait her turn, her shaggy coat streaming.

  * * *

  The thunder had subsided and Elizabeth was drifting on the edge of sleep, soothed by the lashing of the rain against the window glass and the steady breathing of the three dogs. Pentimento, negative space, entelechy, global thinking—the new terms that Daphne had explained that morning kept running through her head. It’s good, learning new stuff and new ways of looking at things…. I’m glad Phillip signed me up for this class…. Words are so powerful, full of hidden meanings… pentimento, entelechy …no, that wasn’t something from Daphne…where did that come from?

  Kyra’s sketchbook. She had left it on the chest in the living room. Had Ben finally remembered to take it to its owner? She could picture it vividly. The odd sketch, presumably a study for a larger piece. And three words, one of which was entelechy.

  After a few minutes of fruitlessly attempting to ignore this new question in favor of sleep, she switched on the bedside lamp, rolled out of bed, and went for a dictionary.

  She read the definitions a second time: 1. Perfect realization as compared to incomplete. 2. That vital force that propels one to self-fulfillment. Not helpful. She looked at the chest, where an untidy heap of magazines and library books sprawled in happy disorder. The sketchbook was still there, almost ob
scured by the oversize coffee-table book of van Gogh’s work.

  Feeling guilty, first, for not having returned the sketchbook sooner, and second, for once again invading Kyra’s privacy, she turned on the reading light by the sofa and sat down to study the entelechy sketch for some clue to the meaning of the obscure word. She flipped hastily past the nude study of Ben and found the page she had remembered.

  There were three words: phoenix, resurgam, and entelechy. Elizabeth looked closer at the drawing, willing herself to understand, even as she wondered why it mattered. Maybe these are possible titles— if this is a sketch for something she’s going to do and…that bird could be a phoenix, I suppose. And resurgam is something they used to put on headstones, something like “I’ll be resurrected.” But it’s entelechy that she’s underlined. She stared at the images: a boot, a white flower, a rose with an exotic bird rising from it. Were those repeated triangular marks waves? Or flames? Or just repeated triangular marks? And was that another bird sketched faintly behind the first?

  “Damned if I can understand this thing,” she remarked to the empty living room. “I’m going to bed. Maybe if I let it incubate, global thinking will make all clear.”

  As she began to close the sketch pad she caught sight of the unfinished portrait next to the picture of Lily Gordon. Suddenly the flinty eyes and dark fringe of hair were familiar. “That’s the woman who let us in at Mrs. Gordon’s place— her housekeeper. And she was Kyra’s nurse too.” She studied the uncompromising face more closely. The sweet lift of the mouth seemed at odds with the stern eyes. Reba. The faithful family retainer.

  She put the sketchbook back on the chest by the door— on top of the heap of magazines— hoping that Ben would notice it and finally take it to Kyra. Rain was still pelting down as she climbed into bed, and a distant grumble of thunder suggested that the storm was not yet over.

  Yawning, she turned off the light and burrowed her head into the softest pillow. The images from the sketchbook page were tantalizing, hovering on the verge of meaning. The memory of the large unfinished piece in Kyra’s studio presented itself, and the two joined as Elizabeth sank into sleep.

  CHAPTER 32

  DEEP WATERS

  (FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30)

  SHE HAD BEEN FATHOMS DEEP IN A DREAM— LULLED by the drumming of rain on the metal roof and the hypnotic roar of water dashing along the rocky creek beds. The startling blue jolts of lightning and the earsplitting thunderclaps that had filled her room and sent all three dogs under the bed had given way to steady rain, and her dreams had turned from chaotic to explicit. Daphne had called her on a cell phone and said, “You have to deconstruct Entelechy and remember: be aware of the negative space,” and she had known what Lily Gordon wanted of her.

  But now Molly and Ursa were whining and pacing beside her bed, anxious to be let out. Elizabeth peered through bleary eyes at the carriage clock on the chest of drawers beside her bed. Six-thirty. It seemed much earlier.

  The two dogs were impatient to be about their business, so she threw back the sheet and pulled herself out of bed. It looked as if the storm was past, but the roar of water in the creeks was so loud and sounded so like rain that she had to go to the window to be sure. Gray, heavy cloud cover, but no rain. Shoving her feet into slippers, she rousted an indignant James from his pillow on the rocking chair and followed the eager Molly and Ursa to the front door. James, who never actually admitted a need to go outside early in the morning, skulked along behind her, ears and tail down, the picture of sorely used dogdom.

  Hope the water breaks held, she thought, holding the door wide for James, who was creeping painfully toward her. “Come on, James, out the door and off the porch.” She escorted him to the steps at the end of the porch and then stopped, her jaw dropping. Somehow, during the night her road had been transformed into a white-water creek. From the top of her driveway, all along the garden, and disappearing down below the barn, what had been a steep gravel road was now a dashing and tumbling mountain stream.

  “Bloody hell!” she shouted, and stood staring at the torrent that would have to be turned back into its accustomed bed quickly, before twenty-one years’ worth of gravel and road improvement washed away entirely. Ben, I need to wake up Ben and get him to bring up the tractor!

  She hurried back to the house. First she glanced into the kitchen, hoping against hope that Ben might have awakened early and come over for coffee. No. Just a sheet of paper propped against the coffeemaker.

  I’m going in to help Kyra. Aidan called and said she’s worried that the river may flood and she needs us to help get her stuff for the show out of there while she can. I didn’t want to wake you— it’s about 2 A . M . right now so I’m going to take off. This is some kind of rain. I’ll be back tomorrow. Ben. PS: Yes, I got the sketchbook.

  Minutes later she had pulled on a pair of sweatpants and her boots, grabbed a mattock and a shovel, and was staring at the blocked culvert at the top of her road— the cause of the water’s diversion. Her mattock would be useless here: too many huge rocks and too much water. This would require the tractor. A nearby rain gauge showed that another four inches of rain had been added during the night to the two inches of the previous afternoon. The roar of the water was loud in her ears, making it hard to think. She picked her way down the edge of the road to the first water break. If she could deepen it a bit here, perhaps the rush of water could be turned back into the branch.

  Cautiously she waded into the midst of the torrent, and began pulling up rocks to deepen the water break. She ignored the water filling her boots and savagely wielded the mattock, digging out the clogged ditch to direct the flood from the water break into the branch. A little muddy water began to fill the ditch, just a trickle at first, making no difference in the galloping flow down the road. She hacked at the mud, deepening the channel, and was heartened to see a stronger stream beginning to scour toward the branch.

  She continued robotically, deepening the channel, adding rocks to the lower side of the water break to make a dam, wishing she had sandbags to make a more solid barrier, trying clumps of hay from the nearby mulch pile only to watch them whirl away down the road. Scrabbling in the rushing water to loosen more rocks to deepen the hole and contain the water, adding the rocks to the front of the dam, at last seeing the white water running off the road and back into its proper course, looking up to see Julio, a dark knight, slowly approaching on the tractor, the bucket bouncing gently in front like a jouster’s lance.

  * * *

  It was well past noon before the culvert was cleared and the water completely restored to its usual streambed. Elizabeth wiped her muddy hands on her jeans and surveyed the damage. The road had suffered badly; much of its gravel had been deposited in drifts to either side and in the field below the barn. The rushing water had gouged out deep ruts and exposed jutting rocks, but the road was still passable for her jeep, if only marginally. A bulldozer and many loads of gravel would be needed to restore the road to its previous state.

  Julio climbed down from the tractor and shook his head in disgust. “Dios mio, the road. It looks like—”

  “Come on, Julio,” she said, cutting off the inevitable word, and started for the house. “I’ll fix us something to eat. There’s no more we can do for now.”

  * * *

  When lunch was over and Julio had returned to his work, Elizabeth sat staring at the note Ben had left. I don’t feel good about this. They told him to stay away. But who…and how could I stop him anyway…he’s a grown man.

  Increasingly uneasy, she went into her bedroom to change her clothes and to make up the bed. As she reached for the pillows, instantaneously the dream came back to her. Daphne on a cell phone. And she told me that I had to deconstruct entelechy. Something about negative space. And I knew the answer when I woke up but the dogs’ carrying on made me forget it.

  She stood clutching the pillow and staring unseeing at the rumpled sheets. Okay, say the rose and the white flower, assuming it’s a l
ily, stand for Kyra’s mother and great-grandmother; the boot could be for Boz….

  “And now all of them are dead.” Her voice sounded unfamiliar to her. Still deep in thought, she reached for the phone and dialed Phillip’s number, only to be answered by his voice mail.

  “Phillip, this is Elizabeth. I…oh, hell, I wish you were there; I’ve got a kind of idea…but it’s pretty vague. Anyway, I’m going to Kyra’s studio…. Ben’s helping her move some stuff and I want to take another look at the painting that was in the back of her studio. It’s probably not important but…Phillip…”

  The words were surprisingly easy to say. “Phillip…I need you.”

  CHAPTER 33

  DECONSTRUCTION

  (FRIDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 30)

  THE STORM HAD LEFT DOWNED TREE LIMBS ALL along the pavement of Ridley Branch, forcing her to drive slowly. At the bridge the French Broad was a muddy maelstrom, spilling over its banks and creeping into the low-lying pastures below the road. Elizabeth sped across the deserted span, her mind working furiously.

  * * *

  The same swollen river was glazing the road that threaded the River District. A few cars were moving along the narrow street, fans of water spraying out on either side. Across the river where the faded tents of some of Asheville’s homeless clung to the steep, overgrown banks, there was the busy activity of a disrupted anthill as the tent dwellers moved their fragile shelters to higher ground.

  The water stood inches deep in the parking area by the Candlestation. Messy, but hardly a threat to Kyra’s studio. Still, she may have thought it would get higher. I know there was a bad flood last year that got into a lot of these places.

  There were only a few cars in the parking lot, all at the far end of the building. Neither Ben’s truck nor Kyra’s car was anywhere in sight. Two long-haired young men emerged from the far door carrying computer monitors, which they loaded into a waiting van. They stood conferring for a few minutes, then disappeared back into the Candlestation.