The Artist Colony

by Joanna FitzPatrick

  He stood up. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “Thanks, Gus. You’ve been really helpful. If you think of anything else, I’m staying at Ada’s cottage.”

  She saw Sirena stop him at the door and they exchanged a few words.

  “Isn’t he the nicest guy? And so cute,” said Sirena plopping down on the bench.

  “Let’s go have that tea I promised you,” said Sarah.

  Sarah and Sirena walked down the seaside boardwalk that led to Hotel Del Monte, crossed the train tracks of its private train depot, and turned up a long driveway bordered with Monterey pines and coastal oaks. As the impressive gothic-style chateau came into view, Sarah looked up to admire its gabled roofs and four-story tower. “When I was here before, I imagined a princess locked in the tower throwing down her long braid to Prince Charming,” said Sarah.

  Sirena laughed and said, “I wish I was that princess. I’d do anything to escape from here.”

  “I thought you liked Carmel.”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s just sometimes I dream of living in Paris, like you do, away from conservative teachers like old Mr. Champlin. My hand just wants me to do something different. And so does my heart.”

  “When am I going to see your work?

  “You were serious?”

  “Of course I was serious. I can’t make any promises but maybe I can help you to get a scholarship at the Académie Julian in Paris. That’s how I got in.”

  Sirena’s face fell. “They’d never give someone like me a scholarship.”

  “You could at least apply.”

  Sirena looked away, but not before Sarah had seen the shadow of hopelessness in her young face.

  As they climbed a short staircase leading up to a wide, covered veranda, a cool ocean breeze swept through the open archways bringing with it the sweet fragrance of blooming white roses.

  At pale pink table-clothed tables, women were wearing pastel linen dresses and straw hats adorned with bouquets of paper flowers. The fashionable men were wearing expensive, tailored suits. The tables were adorned with tempting pastries and baskets of red and yellow fruit that reminded Sarah of a Pierre Bonnard still life.

  A maître d’ dressed in a black tuxedo looked down at Sirena’s paint-splattered coveralls and Sarah’s hatless head and ushered the two women down to the end of one veranda away from the other hotel guests.

  Sarah demanded they be moved to a better table.

  “It’s all right,” said Sirena, seemingly unaffected by the maître d’s blatant rudeness. Sarah quickly realized that the last thing Sirena would want was to make a scene in an uppity place like the Del Monte where she wouldn’t be allowed entrance if she wasn’t passing for white.

  Sirena plopped down in a chair and Sarah joined her. “Look.” She pointed across a slanted lawn to a very large swimming pool crowded with lounging guests both in and out of the pool. “Look at those skimpy bathing suits. Isn’t it wonderful that we no longer have to wear dresses down to our knees when we swim and we can show off our legs?”

  Soon after they ordered, a waiter appeared with a copper teapot, delicate porcelain floral cups and saucers, Devon cream, strawberry confiture, and a plate of still-warm muffins. He noticed Sirena’s napkin was still on the table and laid it across her lap.

  “This is too gorgeous,” exclaimed Sirena, moistening her lips and rubbing her hands together. She loaded her plate and ate while watching the swimmers take high dives. “Look at that fellow’s somersault! Not even a splash”

  “Did you ever come swimming here with Ada?”

  Sirena put down her butter knife and squinted at Sarah. “I hope you didn’t bring me here to talk about Ada.”

  “No. Of course not. It’s just . . .” She took a sip of her tea. “Do you mind so much talking about her?”

  Sirena bit into a peach. “She never brought me here.”

  “Then could you tell me about your morning swims with her on Carmel Bay? Wasn’t the water freezing?”

  Sirena took another bite of her peach. “You don’t think about it. If you did, you’d never go in the water.”

  “What do you think about?”

  “You don’t think at all. You feel how exhilarating it will be to get your blood surging and after your swim you hurry back to your studio to paint. Ada knew about things like that.”

  After the waiter had cleared their plates, Sarah brought out a package and handed it to Sirena. “You’ve been so good to me, taking me around and introducing me to everyone, I wanted to give you a little gift from Oliver’s.”

  Sirena quickly tore off the tissue, opened the package, and gasped when she saw the sable paintbrush. She stroked the brush back and forth in her palm. Sarah noticed her calloused hands. She didn’t get those from painting. She remembered Rosie telling her that Sirena was an abalone diver.

  “This is really generous of you, Sarah. I’ve always wanted a sable brush.”

  “And this is a replacement for the tube I borrowed,” said Sarah, holding up a tube of cobalt blue.

  The grandfather clock in the lobby of the hotel chimed five times.

  “Got to go,” said Sirena, jumping up. “I need to catch the next bus to Carmel.” The waiter looked sternly at Sirena who was shoving muffins in her pocket. She grinned back at him.

  “But why the hurry?” asked Sarah, as she asked the waiter for the check. “I was hoping to take a walk in the Arizona Gardens where Ada and I played among the exotic plants when we were children.”

  “Next time,” said Sirena as they hurried down the path away from the Del Monte. “Robert Pierce has hired me to model for him. I prefer posing for painters, but he pays more.”

  “That good-looking fellow I met at the Mission Tea House yesterday?”

  “Yes, that’s him. He’s a protégé of the photographer Johan Hagemeyer. Hagemeyer lets him stay at his Carmel cabin while he’s in Europe.”

  “I met Hagemeyer when I was working in New York as a receptionist for Alfred Stieglitz.”

  Sirena stopped walking and turned to Sarah. “You worked for Alfred Stieglitz at 291! That gallery is famous. What other artists did you meet?”

  “Georgia O’Keeffe was one of my favorites.”

  “No!” exclaimed Sirena. Several strolling hotel guests turned to look. Sirena whispered, “Did she talk to you?”

  Sarah nodded. “She was most generous with her time. She encouraged me to go to Paris to broaden my approach. And she was so right. And now I’d like to encourage you, Sirena, if you let me.”

  Sirena took off without answering but she looked more hopeful than when Sarah mentioned it earlier.

  —13—

  After a silent bus ride back to Carmel, Sirena was about to leave Sarah on Ocean Avenue when she said, “I almost forgot to tell you. Una and Robinson Jeffers are having a garden party tomorrow afternoon. They were very good friends of Ada’s and they asked me to invite you.”

  “I’d love to come.” It would give her a chance to talk to Mr. Jeffers and find out if he saw Ada on the beach the night of the fourth.

  She stopped at May Laundry to check on the clothes she’d left that morning and was impressed that they were ready to be picked up. When she paid, the Japanese woman behind the counter gave her an envelope and said they’d found something in the side pocket of the vest.

  Outside under the sunlight, she opened the envelope and a gold wedding band slipped out into her hand. FOREVER YOURS was engraved in tiny letters on the inside.

  Albert was eagerly awaiting her return with his leash loosely hanging from his mouth. He’d been cooped up all day and deserved an outing. Albert chose to leave his mark below a Monterey sapling, not caring that it was also in front of a hacienda-style three-level establishment perched on a hillside overlooking the bay with lots of people passing by.

  A sign hung from the stone-arched entrance: HOTEL LA PLAYA, LARGE ROOMS, PRIVATE BATHS, VIEW OF OCEAN. A path bordered with geranium flowerbeds led up to the inviting en
trance.

  Jovial people were strolling in and out of the lobby, some stopping to exchange greetings with their friends. A young couple bent down to pet an enthusiastic tail-wagging Albert and Sarah asked them about the hotel. They told her there was a lounge where people gathered and no, she didn’t need an escort.

  She was missing Ada, and being around people sounded like a better way to spend her evening than sitting in the cottage. She decided to take Albert for a walk on the beach then go home and come back on her own.

  She and Ada had always shared their clothes, so she didn’t hesitate to put on the black trousers and jersey hanging in the closet, which went well with her rosebud shawl. She studied her reflection in the bathroom mirror and colored her lips red, adding a trace of rouge.

  The La Playa Hotel doorman directed her down the hall. She knocked on the locked door and a single human eye looked her over through a peephole. She must’ve passed inspection because the door opened and she stepped inside without a word spoken.

  She could’ve been in a speakeasy in New York—it was just as sultry and seductive. Red leather booths were lit by yellow votive candles flickering on black tablecloths, their occupants cast in shadows. A chandelier shown down on a mahogany bar with brass fixtures. There were casual-chic men and women propped up on bar stools, sipping from martini glasses like models in an Edward Hopper painting.

  To one side, a Negro in a black tuxedo was seated at an upright piano playing the blues. Behind him was a wall of photographs of popular blues and jazz singers and musicians. Bessie Smith was there along with Ma Rainey, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington.

  In spite of the obscure lighting and the jaunty notes being played, Sarah felt awkward standing there alone. She was about to leave when she heard Sirena’s voice coming from a dark booth in the back of the room. As she started to walk toward her, she saw Robert Pierce sitting across from her. They seemed to be having a heated argument so she quickly changed course, and seeing Mac holding court at the bar, joined him. Happy to see her, he introduced her to his friends, another man and two young women, about Sarah’s age.

  “Let me buy you a drink,” he insisted. “What’s your poison?”

  “What are you having?”

  “A whiskey sour.”

  “Okay. I’ll have the same.”

  The bartender shook the ingredients in a silver cocktail shaker and poured the amber concoction into a coupe glass, topping it off with a ruby-red cherry pierced on a stick and a thin slice of orange balanced on the rim. Sarah admired his artistic palette, remembering the fun nights Ada and she had spent in their favorite jazz bar drinking this very cocktail. Feeling her sister’s profound absence, she lifted her glass and whispered, “To you, my dear sister, I miss you so much.”

  “Hey! Don’t toast alone, I’m here,” said Tony, clinking her glass. Sarah chatted for a few minutes with him, then excused herself and carried her drink out onto the terrace to watch the approaching sunset.

  She had just lit a cigarette when she felt a soft tap on her shoulder and spun around to find Robert Pierce’s sea-gray eyes gazing into hers. “Gorgeous, isn’t it?”

  She felt an undeniable tremor of pleasure ripple through her body and blamed it on the whiskey sour.

  “How good to see you again so soon,” he said, looking around the deserted terrace. “Are you here with someone?”

  “No, just me.”

  She turned toward the horizon, away from his lingering gaze.

  “It’s an alluring sunset. I’d like to paint it.”

  “Funny you should say that. I was wishing I’d brought my camera.”

  “I would think photographing sunsets must be rather boring after snapping pictures of Hollywood femme fatales,” she said, trying to say something witty, but his wide smile faded into a frown.

  “I can assure you I’d rather be taking photographs of sunsets than laboring under hot light bulbs trying to make some up-and-coming starlet look radiant under heavy makeup.”

  At least it pays well, thought Sarah, noting the diamond pinned on his silver silk tie and quickly said, “I didn’t mean to insult you. I think you’re very fortunate to be able to make a good living as an artist. Not many of us can do that.”

  She sipped her drink trying to find a less objectionable subject. She found it in her hand. “Am I safe drinking this cocktail?” she asked. “Is there any chance I might be arrested?”

  “Not with me here,” he said, his smile returning. “I know Louie, the owner of La Playa. He’d warn me if we have to make a run for it and I know the back way out of here.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He winked. “No. The marshal would only arrest you if you were causing trouble.” He leaned toward her, “Do you cause trouble, Miss Cunningham?”

  “Sometimes,” she replied, surprised at her coyness. It wasn’t like her to be flirtatious like her sister.

  “How does the La Playa manage to stock a full liquor bar when it’s against the law?”

  “It’s a licensed private club. The rum runners are more than willing to keep Louis’s basement well stocked.”

  “So it’s true about the rum runners docking in this bay.” She picked up her drink and swallowed the last drop. “It does seem pretty silly that there are laws against drinking in America, the land of the free.”

  “It’s more than silly,” he said with a rush of anger. “I spent two years fighting the damn Krauts and I don’t think any suffragette or Washington politician, including President Coolidge himself, has the right to tell me how to live my life. A life I might have lost while he and his cronies sat at home getting smashed on whiskey.”

  It disturbed her that he spoke of Germans as “Krauts,” and she felt equally disturbed by him comparing women fighting for equal rights to unscrupulous Washington politicians, and she had been so enjoying his company up until now. He in turn stared out at the bay for so long that she started back to the bar.

  “Don’t go,” he said, reaching for her arm. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. It’s just hard to not feel anger and resentment after what happened. I lost a lot of friends in the war.”

  Her heart softened toward him. She too had lost friends. Her boyfriend was only twenty-two when he got killed and she still wore his St. Christopher. After he died, she had dedicated herself to making art and had done her best to avoid flirtatious, handsome men up until now.

  “Please stay. There’s a good chance we might see the green flash tonight. The conditions are just right.” He drew her back to the railing and she didn’t resist.

  “My sister told me about that phenomena, but I’ve never been lucky enough to see one.”

  “Concentrate on the horizon as the flash only lasts a couple of seconds.”

  His body leaned into hers from behind and she held very still while they watched the upper half of the sun be swallowed by the vast Pacific until only a strip of bright gold remained.

  He said softly, “‘. . . it will be green, but a most wonderful green, a green which no artist could ever obtain on his palette, a green of which neither the varied tints of vegetation nor the shades of the most limpid sea could ever produce the like! If there be green in Paradise, it cannot but be of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope.’”

  “That’s so beautiful. Did you write that?”

  He laughed. “I wish. It’s a quote from my favorite novelist, Jules Verne.”

  She kept her hands on the railing and her eyes on the edge of the world until the last golden sliver turned the sky into a crimson flame that then went out leaving the sky without light until a half-moon appeared and the constellations relit the sky.

  He gently turned her around and his sea-gray eyes gazed into hers. “I was really hoping you’d see your first green flash with me here.”

  “Me too,” said Sarah, suddenly overcome by sadness. Her voice faltered. “My sister said she saw it for the first time in Carmel. Maybe she was standing right here.”


  He kissed the tear falling down her cheek.

  “I see Robert found you,” said Sirena, intruding out of nowhere.

  Embarrassed, Sarah pulled away from him.

  “I thought you’d gone home,” he said harshly.

  “I guess you were wrong,” said Sirena, who was equally unpleasant.

  Sarah wrapped her rose-embroidered shawl over her shoulders, and said to both of them, “It’s rather chilly, isn’t it?” And then to Sirena she smiled and said, “Why didn’t you tell me Carmel had a speakeasy a few blocks from Ada’s cottage?”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you. She was a regular customer,” said Sirena, still glaring at Robert.

  “Sirena, be a sweetheart and ask the waiter to bring us two whiskey sours. Have one yourself at the bar and add it to my tab.”

  Sarah didn’t like the way Robert spoke down to Sirena and took the girl’s arm in a gesture of female support, “Why don’t we all go inside and have that drink together?”

  He followed them back inside where they joined Mac and his friends. Robert insisted Sarah sit on the barstool next to him. She found it impossible to say no.

  He pulled out his wallet and paid the bartender for their next round of drinks from a thick wad of bills and included a generous tip. He saw the curious look on Sarah’s face and said, “My wallet isn’t always so padded. I just got paid by Cosmopolitan for a fashion layout.”

  She listened to Robert and Tony talk about a battleship docked at the wharf that they’d both admired. Robert seemed to know a lot about the ship’s war history and Tony, who had been too young to go to war, listened attentively. Sarah felt Robert’s arm press against hers. It sent a tingling sensation up her arm that she found way too pleasant.

  This has got to stop, she said to herself, moving her arm away. She looked around for Sirena but she was gone, her drink left on the bar.

  A few couples were on the dance floor, dancing cheek to cheek while the piano player sang Ma Rainey’s “See See Rider.” Sarah tapped her feet to the bluesy beat, trying to ignore the guilt she felt for enjoying the music Ada had loved and would never hear again.