“I’d like to thank my wife for her refreshing lack of support.”
That was how John imagined starting his opening remarks at his first big show. He wasn’t sure if artists still made remarks at their showings, or if the wine-and-cheese affairs attended by smart people in black sweaters were just a device of the movies and his imagination. But sometimes, in the middle of a sketch, he would pause and picture himself making witty remarks before a bemused and discriminating crowd.
Alice would like the statement—it was a little bit mean and a little bit ironic. But at the showing in John’s imagination, there was no Alice—she was at home, probably watching TV until she fell asleep on the couch. This made the statement more poignant to him.
“I think I’d like to start painting again,” he said at dinner one night. He quickly put a forkful of potato in his mouth to give Alice space to respond.
“Umm-hmm. I thought you threw away that old paint set.”
“One of them.” It was a set of oils, the tubes so dry and brittle that they had snapped in his hands, spilling paint dust on the floor. “I still have some watercolors under the dresser.”
“They’re probably no good. You haven’t used them in ten years.”
“Seven.” Their son, Mickey, had been nine when John had last pulled them out to help with a fourth grade art project. “I can always buy a new set.”
“Suit yourself.” She took a sip of water. “We need to fix that rain gutter this weekend.”
Alice had never known John as an artist. He met her after college, while he was earning his MBA. To her, John was an accountant who had risen quickly from Fortune 500 drudgery to a junior partnership at a small CPA firm, but seemed now to have found his level and lacked the ambition to become a senior partner or strike out on his own. She never asked questions about his past, about those two years between college and business school that he called his “bohemian period”.
She knew that he could draw well enough. During their first two years of marriage, when John packed a lunch every morning for Alice to take to work at the university, he drew cartoons on the lunch bag: caricatures of their cats, or his in-laws, or, during her pregnancy, of a fetal Mickey contemplating how he would change his parents’ lives.
When Mickey was four, John drew him three series of alphabet letters, formed from animals, toys, and office equipment. John especially like the capital “C” made by a fluorescent desk lamp, and the lower case “i” around which a snake twined, an apple in its mouth providing the dot. Those were framed and hanging in the little attic room John used as an office, long ago banished from Mickey’s bedroom. Alice had talked about moving them back, but she hadn’t yet.
Fitting the easel into the office space had taken some finesse. John would still need the desk and computer for paying bills and for the work he brought home. And the bookcases of accounting manuals and journals, though he seldom referred to them anymore, were like a security blanket. But by shifting the desk under the eaves and thinning out the books, he was able to clear a shelf for brushes, pens, and paints, and squeeze the easel into a corner.
The ceiling in the room was too low to extend the easel to its full height. He had to leave one joint of the hinged legs folded, and set his desk chair in front of the paper. A heavy and outdated manual kept the contraption from tipping. Though he had never painted while sitting before, John quickly adapted, and actually found the new posture pleasant. His knees weren’t what they had been twenty years ago.
“I think John’s having his mid-life crisis,” Alice would say to their friends. “He’s turning his office into an art studio. At least he’s not riding around in a sports car with a twenty year old floozy.” Then she would laugh, and smile wickedly at John.
“Are they any good?” Betty asked one night. She was the wife of Archie, one of the senior partners at the firm. They were sitting on Archie’s backyard deck, drinking Long Island iced teas and listening to the whir of nighttime summer bugs.
“What?” Alice asked.
“John’s pictures. Are they any good?”
Alice shrugged. “I’ve only seen a couple. He doesn’t let me in there.” She giggled. “Maybe that’s where he keeps his floozy.”
“The Parkside Coffee House is showing some next week,” John said. He sloshed the liquor in the bottom of his glass.
“Really?” Alice asked. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“I mentioned it last week.”
“You’re not leaving us for an artist’s life, are you?” Archie asked. He grinned, the porch lights reflecting off his damp bald spot.
“No, no, of course not. This is just a hobby. I used to paint in college.”
“Good.” Archie reached for the pitcher of Long Island iced tea and for John’s mostly empty glass. “We need you for the new audit contracts coming in.”
The Parkside Coffee House, six blocks from their home, had grown up with Mickey. Alice took him there almost every day for his first two years, until she went back to work and Mickey went to daycare. It had a room full of toys with bright green walls, and all the neighborhood mothers brought their toddlers there. John had gone a few times on days off, drank coffee and watched from the corner while Mickey played. The mothers never spoke to him.
New owners took over when Mickey was about seven, and began serving ice cream. Mickey was old enough that the Parkside was within his range of unsupervised bike rides, and he was forever begging John for money to go there with his friends for a double scoop of mint chocolate chip on a waffle cone. John always gave in.
When Mickey turned a sullen sixteen, the latest owner of the Parkside transformed the ice cream parlor into a neo-bohemian haunt. The little side vestibule that had been the playroom was now a cramped gallery, its walls painted black. The lights were dimmed in the main room, and at night the tables were set with tea candles while poets and folksingers tried to enlighten the customers. Jack Kerouac and Chet Baker pouted from simple frames above the coffee bar. John thought it was a bit much, but kind of liked the new look.
Pascal, the owner, hung local artists. Over the last few years, the neighborhood had developed an artsy reputation, as artists fled the higher prices in the neighborhoods by the lakes for the relative economy by the river. His wasn’t the only coffee shop or restaurant in the area showing art, but his had a reputation for showing the best.
In his native Belgium, Pascal claimed, he had helped launch many new artists from his coffee shops. And it was true that the proprietors of several downtown galleries came to Pascal’s shows at the Parkside; John had seen a few pictures for sale downtown that had first shown there.
“These are very nice,” said Pascal, holding one of John’s paintings at arm’s length. It was an avocado-green pear on a pale yellow table, really just a practice run after John had bought new oils and brushes. “Your colors are vivid.”
“Thank you.”
“Will you allow me to show some here?”
“I hoped you might.”
Pascal smiled. His teeth were nicotine brown. “You are a bit old to be a new artist.”
“Oh, I’m an old artist. I’ve just been taking a break.”
Like his first show in college, this one at the Parkside would not be solo. Pascal selected a half dozen of John’s paintings, including the pear and one of Alice asleep on the couch, her hair fanned out across a pillow. They would hang in the little gallery with another artist’s charcoal nudes. But if it went well, Pascal said, if the pictures sold, he would consider expanding the show.
“I hear from Archie you’ve got pictures for sale.” Phil Black, another senior partner, walked into John’s office and sat in the chair by the door. He loosened his tie.
“Oh, it’s no big thing. I started painting again a couple of months ago, the guy at the coffee shop up the street wanted to show a few.”
“Well, I can’t even draw a straight line.” Phil laughed. “Any takers?”
“One, so far. They’ve only been up a couple of days.”
“My wife loves that stuff. She’s got a room downstairs full of crap she buys at those ‘starving artist’ things out by the airport. Me, I like the walls pretty bare. Where’d you say this place is?”
John told him.
“Well, I’ll send the missus, have her tell me what she thinks.” He pulled a business card out of his jacket pocket and wrote the Parkside’s address on the back. “Do you have the papers for the new audit contract ready to sign?”
John stopped at the Parkside on his way home to collect his share of the sales, and to see how the show was going. Three of the six had been bought, and Pascal wrote out a check for a hundred and twenty dollars. He planned to treat Alice to a nice dinner, and put any change toward new brushes.
“I am very pleased with the response,” Pascal said as he handed John the check. “The colors are so vivid, I love how they glow in my little gallery.”
“Thank you,” John said. He folded the check and slipped it into his breast pocket.
“In a month, perhaps, we can show more. I would like to have only your pictures—the charcoals are not so popular.”
The painting of Alice was one of the three still in the gallery. It was darker than the others, dominated by Alice’s brown hair against the green pillow. The others were still lifes—a fire-engine red apple and a vase of purple peonies—with which John was not especially pleased.
“I like that one.”
John turned around. A young woman—a girl really—stood behind him, pointing at the picture of Alice. Her hair was dyed jet black, and a sliver stud glistened in her lip.
“Thank you,” John said. The he realized she had been talking to someone else, another girl, and he turned as red as the apple hanging beside Alice.
“Oh, did you paint that?” the second girl asked. She had a tattoo on her neck—an abstract blue-black design—and a red stone in her nose.
“Yes.”
The first girl smiled. Her eyes were bright blue; he suspected her hair was naturally blonde.
“Is it your wife?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“She’s pretty.”
“Thank you.”
“I wish I could afford it. They always have good art here.” She shrugged. “Maybe someday.”
After Alice had gone to bed, John sat at his easel and sketched the girl at the coffee shop. He wanted to capture her smile, her eyes, the tilt of her head. He wanted to remember her.
She was probably not much older than Mickey—twenty, twenty two? She could have been his daughter. Maybe Jessica’s daughter.
Jessica had shared his first show in college. Or, really, he had shared hers. Jessica was majoring in art, was a favorite of the faculty, was bound for an MFA and a career of shows. John’s minor was in art; most of his classes were counting toward a business degree.
Two of the art faculty had tried to convince him to change his major, to put his energy into painting and minor in business. But John’s father was paying the tuition, and expected a return on his investment. The not-inconsequential art fees were John’s responsibility, a bargain that allowed him his hobby.
“I wish I could paint like you,” John told Jessica the night after their show opened. The gallery, a small but bright space carved out of the science building, had been filled with faculty and students. Most of the students were meeting a liberal arts requirement with an art appreciation class, and would get extra credit by reviewing the show.
“You could, even better, if you took the time.”
“There’s not much time.” He was walking Jessica back to her dormitory, which they were fast approaching; John always felt a little sad when they got there.
“There’s plenty of time, if you make it.” She stopped by the building’s door and took his hand.
“My roommate is gone for the weekend,” she said. “Why don’t you come up?”
They made love for the first, second, and third time that night. Three months later, after John graduated, Jessica moved into his apartment.
John was staying in town that summer with an internship at the paper mill, learning how to keep an office of accountants happy. Fresh coffee, it turned out, was the key. Jessica painted at the apartment during the day; at night, they went to the coffee shops near campus, or took long walks along the river, or made love. She never answered the phone; John didn’t want his father to know about her.
It was almost two in the morning when John decided to go to bed. His sketches of the girl from the coffee shop were starting to turn into Jessica. He remembered Jessica’s bright blue eyes, her smile, her yellow gold hair, and he dreamed of her that night for the first time in fifteen years.
“I guess your little hobby is paying off,” Alice said. She was having a cannoli and coffee for dessert; John would have almost fifteen dollars left for brushes.
“Pascal would like to have another show. Solo.” John yawned into the back of his hand.
“You’ve seemed awfully tired lately.”
“I suppose. There’s been a lot to do at work; it’s audit season.”
“You don’t think you’re up too late with your painting?”
“Maybe a little. I’ve got a couple things to finish.”
“There’s other stuff to do around the house, you know.”
“I know.”
Alice took a bite of her cannoli; a pastry crumb hung on her lip like the girl’s silver stud. “Maybe you should take a break from it.”
The last painting John finished for the show was of Jessica, or maybe of the girl from the coffee shop; he wasn’t sure. The woman’s head extended past the top edge of the canvas, so she was visible only from the golden hair on her shoulders to her knees at the bottom edge. She stood with her left shoulder and right hip dipped a little bit. Her arms were crossed beneath small breasts, and a bristly thatch of blonde hair seemed almost to jut from the canvas between her thighs. This was a defiant woman, almost scolding the viewer with her stance.
He covered it with a blanket before moving it out to his car.
The door to the back bedroom, Mickey’s room, was open when John came home. He set the blanket that had covered the painting on the couch and stood in the hallway.
Alice was by the window that looked out on the back yard. She was looking at the wall in the corner where the Roy Rogers guitar John had found at a junk shop when Mickey turned seven was hanging. At the time, she had scolded him for paying too much for it.
The “C” and “i” from his office were under the guitar, a little bit crooked. They looked strange there—the alphabet had hung from Mickey’s fourth to seventh birthdays; the cowboy theme had run until he was twelve.
“We should do something with this room someday,” Alice said. “Space is always tight in an old house.”
John stood behind her and put his hands on her hips. Despite years of walks to the park with Mickey, Alice had never lost all of the weight from carrying Mickey. John loved the softness of her middle. He leaned in to kiss her neck, and she twisted away.
John decided to walk to the Parkside the night Pascal hung his second set of paintings. September had just started, and summer still clung to the air. He brought a light jacket along just in case.
They had left each other in September, amicably enough. Jessica was on her way to an MFA program in New Mexico, and John was going back to the city because his internship hadn’t turned into a job. She tried, though not all that hard, to convince him to go with her.
“I’m sure you could get a job in New Mexico, too,” she said.
“My chances are better in the city. My father knows people there.”
“It would be easier for you to paint in New Mexico.”
“I know.”
He tried to paint in the city, and even sold a few pictures at a coffee shop near the university. For two years, he managed to lead a double life, painting and visiting shows at night. But he was so tired after work, after ten hours of numbers and papers and green computer screens, that he only wanted to sleep when he got home. Eventually he left his easel folded in the hallway, and spent his nights working on his MBA.
“I am glad you could come,” Pascal said.
The lights were dim in the coffee shop; the candles on the tables weren’t lit yet. The boy who usually made lattés was setting up a microphone and amplifier on the little stage in the corner for the folksinger who was coming at eight.
John walked to the little gallery. The defiant woman was the first thing he saw, dominating the wall facing the coffee bar. Alice slept at her left elbow, and the apple hung at her right. There were park scenes—children on swings, paths through the trees—and more fruit and flowers. He had left behind the only painting he had done of Mickey, afraid someone would buy it.
“I like her very much,” Pascal said, pointing at the woman. “She reminds me of someone I knew.”
“Thank you. She reminds me of someone I knew, too.”
John sat at a table near the gallery with a tall glass of orange juice. It was too late for coffee—he wanted to be able to sleep when he got home. He watched a handful of people walk into the gallery, look around, and walk out.
The girl who had liked the picture of Alice was there, with a young man. His brown hair was almost to his shoulders, and the tail of a snake tattoo wound around his right arm and disappeared under the sleeve of his black T-shirt. They stood in front of the defiant woman, talking quietly. He stroked the girl’s bottom with his right hand, and she giggled, slapping his hand away. She smiled at John when they left, and he smiled back.
“I bought the pear.”
John turned. A woman about his age stood beside him. She looked out of place in the coffee shop, a little better dressed than she should be.
“The pear,” she repeated. “I bought the pear, a couple of weeks ago.”
“Oh, thank you.”
She sat down across from him and took a card out of her purse. “I work at the East Wind Gallery.”
John took the card. He recognized the gallery, located in a posh suburban mall. The card named her “Janet Crowley, collector.”
“I showed the pear to the owner,” she continued. “She liked it a lot. She’d like to see more. Do you have a card?”
He took out his wallet and handed her one of his cards from Jackson Schwarner Black. Janet looked at it and smiled.
“Accountant by day, bohemian by night?”
“No,” John said. “Accountant day and night.”
Her eyes were a startling green—John wondered if she wore tinted contact lenses. Except for a few brittle strands of gray, her hair was thick and brown and cut in a short bob. When she smiled, John could see tiny wrinkles around her eyes.
“I can’t believe I’ve never seen your work before,” she was saying. “I make a habit of visiting the shows around the city.”
“Oh, this is my first in a long, long time.”
“Really? Where have been hiding all of this?”
“This is all new. It’s different from when I used to paint.”
“I suppose it’s been filtered through a lot of experience.”
“Nothing in particular. I’m just an accountant.”
Janet turned sideways and looked into the gallery. “That center piece—the nude. That’s stunning.”
“Thank you. That’s the newest one—I finished her two days ago.”
“She’s so bold.”
“Defiant.”
Janet turned back and smiled at him, her eyes focusing on his. “Yes, defiant.”
John didn’t try to pull away when Janet leaned over to kiss him. They were in Janet’s car, on their way to someplace quieter to talk after the folksinger had started a little past eight. John felt guilty about going, and put a five dollar bill in the singer’s tip jar as they left.
Her lips weren’t soft, but they were warm and insistent. John kissed her back, and put his hand in the thick brown hair above her neck. The light changed to green, and she moved back into her seat, smiling sideways at him. John left his hand on her neck.
Janet’s house was near the lakes, off a twisting street and up a steep hill. It was larger and newer than his house, its lawn and garden carefully manicured. She led him inside without speaking, kissing him again in the foyer.
“My husband is at a convention,” she whispered as she kissed his ear.
John followed her through the living room and dining room to the kitchen. Her house was carefully decorated, with none of the haphazard jumbling of his own home. His pear hung in a corner of the living room, above an uncomfortable-looking chair for which it was perfectly suited. A wedding photograph, the only private piece in the living room, perched on the fireplace mantle. A young Janet smiled out from the gilded frame, fertile and glowing.
She was pouring two glasses of scotch from a decanter. John took his and sipped, closing his eyes as the liquor burned his throat. He tasted the scotch on Janet’s lips when she kissed him.
“Let’s go to the bedroom,” she said. She took his glass from him and set it on the marble counter.
They undressed themselves upstairs in dim light. John saw himself in the mirrored closet door and wished the light were dimmer; his paunch looked like an inner tube around his waist, and his skin was pasty white from twenty years under fluorescent lamps. But Janet was no beauty herself, thin and dry, her breasts sagging, her convex belly disappearing into shadows. She threw the blankets off the bed, and John followed with a feeling of duty, as when starting some onerous household task.
Janet was all angles and points. He could feel her ribcage under his hands, the bones of her hips as she arched her back, the ridges of her vertebrae. John pressed his face into the sheet beside her head and thought about Alice’s pillowy middle, Jessica’s smooth shoulders, the firm ripeness of the girl at the coffee shop.
The red numbers of the clock beside the bed said that it was almost eleven thirty. John swung his feet out onto the floor and looked back at Janet, expecting her to be asleep. She met his look with her bright, green, expressionless eyes.
“I have to go,” he whispered.
“I’ll drive you,” she said.
The porch light was still on when John walked up the steps. He and Alice had recently repainted the porch for the second time. The first had been when Mickey was almost two and they discovered that the sills under the French windows had lead paint a few layers down. One corner of the floor still had white dust ground into the wood grain from that project.
Through the piano windows between the porch and front room, John saw the flickering glow of the television and could hear muffled voices. He pushed the unlocked door open and closed it gently behind him. The living room was dark.
Alice was asleep on the couch in the front room. He pulled a blanket over her and touched her hair before switching the television off. She stirred, but didn’t wake up.
Light leaked out from around the door to the back bedroom. John hesitated a moment, hand hovering over the doorknob. Before Alice started sleeping on the couch, John would sometimes come downstairs at night to make sure Mickey had gone to sleep. He had developed a habit of staying up late, reading, which only made his teenage surliness worse in the morning.
For two weeks after the accident, his bedroom light had stayed on. Neither John nor Alice had opened the door. He left the door closed and went to bed.
When he was upstairs, John noticed that he had misbuttoned his shirt. He groaned and fell onto the bed. His knees ached.
John stopped at the Parkside on his way to work. He bought a coffee and a scone, then walked to the gallery. The black walls absorbed most of the morning sunlight, making his paintings glow eerily in contrast.
The title plates beneath the defiant woman and Alice bore red dots, indicating that they had been sold. He wondered who had bought them, and if the same person had bought them both. He didn’t think they should be separated, and was a little disappointed that he hadn’t bought them himself. The coffee burned his tongue, and he decided not to come back to see Pascal until the weekend.