The Riverhouse

by G. Norman Lippert

  It had started with the owner, the man who had designed the house and overseen its construction, the famous artist whose name was Whitaker or Whitman—something that started with a W at least, to match the big wrought iron letter bolted to the chimney.

  Shane envisioned a tall, thin man, closely shaven, but with thick black hair that he combed across his brow like a raven’s wing, Hitler style. He wore white button-down shirts, like Shane when he was working his shift, and gray flannel pants. He had large hands and deep set, heavy-lidded eyes. He was handsome, in a narrow, angular kind of way, and he was particular, almost fussy, about the design of the house, the landscaping, the placement of the garden and the decorative statuary. But he didn’t care about the interior of the house. That was the domain of the woman, the one visible on the steps of the house in Shane’s painting.

  He didn’t know why he’d decided to paint her instead of the man himself; the painting had just seemed to ask for her. She was young and pretty, but quiet. Probably, she was the artist’s wife. While he, the artist, had hovered around the exterior, primping and overseeing the overall façade of the house, she had worked on the inside, arranging the furniture, hanging the art, populating the bookshelves and hutches.

  Shane imagined her going on long shopping vacations, returning with shipments of antiques, rugs from junk shops in China, wall tapestries from castles in Scotland. She and her husband had both loved the house, but from entirely different directions. They complemented each other in that way, and yet, in Shane’s mind, as he painted, he didn’t sense happiness. He sensed a sort of wounded sadness, an existence of constant, low-grade anguish, at least for the woman. The shopping trips were a thin mask, overlaying that deep, sharp misery like a mortician’s sheet. Shane found himself more and more intrigued by her.

  More than anything, the story of the manor house seemed to be her story, rather than that of the artist himself. Maybe that was because, while he had designed and built the house, she had lived in it and given it its soul. She had defined it as a home. In a rather poetic sense, the artist might have fathered the house, but the woman had been its mother, nurturing it and raising it, offering it her heart.

  These, at least, were the things Shane imagined as he worked on the painting, even as he’d painted late into the previous night, filling in, adding detail, while the storm flickered and roared obliviously outside the cottage. It was pure invention, of course; stream of consciousness prose designed to breathe life into the image in his head. But it felt like more than that.

  As he'd painted, it had been almost like traveling in time and space. He was barely aware of the brush in his hand, or of sitting on the stool in his studio. He’d gone into his paintings before, sinking fathoms deep, but never quite like this. He’d never come up out of the painting hours later, disoriented and stiff, his right arm aching deep in the shoulder from working so hard and fast, unable even to recall how long he’d been at it. It made him wonder.

  And then, of course, there was the statue and the hydrangeas—the footpath entrance that he had painted into the background of the house before he’d even known there was a footpath. That made him wonder, too.

  It had been easy enough to locate information about the artist on the internet. Shane had merely performed a Google search for “Famous Missouri Painter Portrait President”, which had pretty much summed up everything he knew about the man. He knew he’d recognize the name when he saw it. Within two minutes he had settled on a long article linked from a website about Missouri tourism. Shane cradled his coffee in his hands and leaned back to read:

  “Gustav Ferdinand Wilhelm was born on March 12th, 1898, in Cologne, Germany. His parents, Oscar, a shoemaker, and Henrietta, a seamstress, immigrated to the United States when Gustav was four years old. There, they lived in a small apartment in New York City, sharing the space with a Flemish couple that they had met during their crossing. Poor and struggling through their first hard winter, conditions were worsened by a lingering illness (probably scurvy, or ‘Barlow’s disease’, as it was known then) that Gustav had contracted aboard the ship. Nursed by his mother while his father and older brother sought work, Gustav spent that winter in a bed in the corner of the apartment’s kitchen, near the stove. Having always expressed an interest in drawing, young Gustav spent this time creating pictures on a small slate that had been given him by his father. The Flemish man who lived with them was a journeyman artist, specializing in miniature keyhole portraits. He recognized young Gustav’s talents, and spent many evenings teaching the boy portraiture and the basic artistic elements of balance, perspective and symmetry. Gustav fondly remembered these times, and looked back on this man, whom he only knew by his first name, Letard, as some of the happiest moments of his childhood, despite his illness.

  “At age fifteen, Gustav, or Gus as he had come to be known, went to work for the same studio that Letard had worked at. The studio head put Gus to work painting backgrounds for landscapes and architectural scenes. Gus quickly chafed at these assignments, which he found boring and simplistic, and begged to be given a commission for a full portrait. The studio head, a painter named Sylvester Bertoni, allowed Gus his first paid portrait; that of Bertoni’s pet bullmastiff. Gus, who even then was known for his quick temper, felt insulted. He refused the commission, and was subsequently banned from the studio. After two days, Gus had second thoughts about the commission, and about the prospect of being unemployed in turn-of-the-century New York, and returned to Bertoni to request a second chance at the portrait. Bertoni refused him, insisting that while the young painter had talent, his ego had already rendered him untrainable, and therefore useless to the studio. This criticism affected Gus deeply. Secretly, he followed Bertoni home and spied on him as his former employer interacted with his beloved bullmastiff. For five days, Gus returned, sketching the dog in charcoal on butcher’s paper. Finally, content that he could represent the bullmastiff as Bertoni saw it, he returned to his family’s apartment and painted a small portrait. Years later, Gus would insist that it was this experience that taught him how to see his subjects, not as mannequins posed before him, but as living individuals, each with their own unique history and personality. This sensitivity, and Gus’s uncanny ability to transmute those stories into his portraits, became the hallmark of his work in later life, and led to his commissions from some of the most influential and important leaders of the day. Upon completion of the bullmastiff portrait, Gus presented it to Bertoni as a gift, asking only to have his position at the studio restored. Bertoni agreed, on the condition that he personally serve as Gus’ teacher. Gus progressed under Bertoni’s tutelage, and within two years became the most requested portrait artist in the studio’s employ.

  “In July of 1916, Gus resigned from Bertoni’s studio with the intention of traveling to Washington D.C. to pursue a particularly unique opportunity. He explained to his parents that he had read about the recent death of the official presidential portrait artist, Herbert Woosterhouse, and intended to apply for the honor of painting the portrait of the next president. In fact, in the wake of Woosterhouse’s death, the White House had announced a search for a new presidential portrait artist, and an article detailing that search had made its way into the New York Times. Gus had determined immediately to move to Washington to apply for the job, despite the fact that the article declared that only artists with at least ten years’ experience and the references to prove it need apply. Bertoni himself warned Gus not to throw away his position and his growing reputation in the New York art world on such a foolish lark. Years later, Gus remarked in his memoirs that, despite the warnings of Bertoni and his family, there was never any question in his mind about the move to Washington. In his own words: ‘They insisted that by leaving New York, I was risking my future as an artist. What they did not understand was that, by staying in New York, I would have been risking my future as a legend.’

  “Gus took what little money he had and moved to the nation’s capital. There, he shared a rented roo
m with several other artists and performers, sleeping in a bunk barely twelve inches from the ceiling. Over two hundred artists applied for the position of official government portrait artist. All but twenty were sent home after a portfolio review by then Secretary of the Interior, Franklin Lane. Despite Gus’ lack of experience, he was not among those sent home on the first day. He and the remaining twenty artists were allowed the opportunity to paint a sample portrait of the sitting president, Woodrow Wilson. In his memoirs, Gus described the experience:

  “‘We were led into the oval office at half past two, just as the man was returning from his rather late lunch. We had to carry our easels, paint pots and supplies, and were instructed to stay well back from the desk, as the president was engaged throughout the day in meetings and various affairs of state. I was positioned in a corner, no less than twelve paces away. Wilson preferred the afternoon curtains to be tied back, with the windows open, and the declining sun dazzled my eyes directly, obscuring the president even further. I was in no way allowed to change my position once the session began, and the president himself was exceedingly recalcitrant to any suggestions of pose. Indeed, after my third request, I was told summarily to be still or be put out. Between the heat of the office, the constant motion of the subject, and the lack of even the barest refreshments, it was by far the least pleasant experience of my professional career. Indeed, I began to wonder if I truly desired the post after all.’

  “Despite his doubts, Gus completed his painting of Wilson within the week, injecting it with his usual sense of the personality of the subject. All of the completed portraits were presented to Secretary Lane for his inspection. A week later, Gus’ portrait was returned to him at his rented room. A note was pinned to it, penned in Lane’s own hand. It read, ‘The office of the presidency is a position of honor, not leisure. This work is more suited to the bathhouse than the white house.’ The post of official White House portrait artist was later awarded to a veteran painter from Virginia named George W. Hallsley. Crushed and disillusioned, Gus took a job in a kitchen at a nearby hotel, but despite this very bruising setback, his career in Washington was far from over.”

  Shane stopped reading and leaned back, frowning slightly.

  He had often thought that he was a different sort of artist than the starving artists he had so often seen lurking in the halls at Tristan and Crane, but he had always thought so with a certain amount of smug disdain. The starving artists may have been more hip than Shane, and some of them may indeed have been equally as talented, but he’d never envied them. They were slaves to the muse, arrogant and temperamental.

  Gustav Ferdinand Wilhelm, however, had apparently been an entirely different breed of artist, neither like the starving artists back at T and C, nor like Shane himself.

  Shane felt a certain amount of discomfort in reading his exploits. Here was a man who had been nearly the exact polar opposite of he, himself; an artist who neither submitted to the muse nor rejected her, but who managed to command her affections as his own, and apparently without even trying. Here was a risk taker, a man of ambition and recklessness, of passion and megalomania. And yet, he seemed likeable enough, if a little intense.

  Shane, on the other hand, was careful, timid, deliberate, and quiet. He tended to downplay his work, believing that if he pointed out its flaws first, no one else would be able to. He never made grand claims about his skills, or expected greatness.

  Truly, Wilhelm, the man in whose cottage Shane now lived, was a different kind of artist than him. And was Shane a little jealous? Maybe he was. He hadn’t yet finished the article about Wilhelm’s life, but he knew that things certainly hadn’t ended with him working in a hotel kitchen. Things had gotten much better for him. He had indeed eventually painted for presidents, and even for kings and queens. Shane had never even considered such grandiose aspirations. He believed, even now, that he didn’t really even wish for such things. And yet…

  Just then, Shane heard the crunch of tires on gravel. A dart of sunlight flashed through the curtains next to him as a vehicle turned onto the pull-off in front of the cottage, parking next to his geriatric Chevy pickup truck.

  Shane glanced at his watch: it was twelve minutes after ten. Chris, the intern from Greenfeld’s office, was right on time. Shane had known interns in the past; three or four of them had made their way through the offices of Tristan and Crane during his time there. They were usually college students who spent most of their time hanging around the office kitchen talking about whatever they’d watched on television the night before or how drunk they’d gotten the previous weekend. He’d never been particularly clear what it was interns were supposed to do, mainly because he’d never been interested enough to ask.

  He didn’t know what to expect from the aforementioned Chris. He assumed he would be in his twenties, wearing an expensive, ill-fitting shirt and tie over a pair of jeans. He’d probably be friendly and gregarious in a forced, I’m-talking-to-a-grown-up kind of way, and he’d express polite, insincere interest in Shane’s work for as long as it took to pack the painting in a crate and lug it out to the waiting van. Shane stood up, coffee in hand, and crossed the living room to the front door. He pulled it open and stood there, blinking in the hazy sunlight, as the driver’s door of the gray van swung open.

  “Morning,” he called to the figure that climbed out, unseen on the other side of the van. Beneath the van, Shane could see a pair of small feet; bare ankles and taupe low-heeled shoes of a decidedly female stripe. He had time to raise his eyebrows in some small surprise—apparently Chris was a Christine, not a Christopher—before she came around the back of the van and all the rest of his expectations were knocked aside as well.

  “You Bellamy?” the woman asked, glancing up at him as she pulled the rear doors of the van open.

  “No, I’m his butler, Jeeves,” Shane said, trying to mask his surprise with humor, “but I’ll inform his lordship of your arrival, miss…?”

  “Uh-huh,” the woman said, pulling a long white box out of the van’s dark interior. “I’m Christiana, but you can call me Chris. Everyone else does.” Shane studied her while she was turned away from him. She wore tan slacks that stopped halfway between her knees and ankles; were those called capris? He thought they were. Over that, she wore a lilac blouse with short, almost nonexistent sleeves. She had hair so black that it reflected the sun with nearly purple highlights; it was pulled back in a neat ponytail that swung as she turned, hefting the box out into the sunlight.

  “Here, let me help you with that,” Shane said, remembering himself. He set his coffee on the porch railing and trotted out into the sunlight. Christiana allowed him to take the box, which was nearly as tall as she was. It was very light, but ungainly. Shane felt a little ridiculous, as he almost always did when he was one-on-one with an attractive woman he didn’t yet know. She looked at him with an unreadable expression that could have been disdain, could have been professional aloofness, could even have been plain and simple boredom. Her skin was very tan and Shane couldn’t help noticing that she had large eyes, almost as black as her hair. She wasn’t beautiful, exactly, but she was unique in a way that Shane found immediately attractive. It was hard not to stare at her.

  “Christiana Corsica,” she said, sticking out her thin little hand, her expression unchanging.

  “Oh, ah,” Shane replied, dropping the box so that it leaned against him, tall as his chest. He shook her hand; it was warm and dry, her grip firm. “Shane Bellamy. Nice to meet you. Er, coffee?” He gestured toward his own cup where it sat on the porch railing.

  “Still have half a cup sitting in the cup holder,” Christiana replied, nodding toward the van. “I need to get back to the office quick like a bunny or Morrie will be sending out a posse. He uses up all his slack on his artists. The rest of us have to jump when he says frog or things get ugly. Where’s it at?”

  It took Shane a moment to realize that she meant the matte painting. “Oh. Inside, upstairs, in the studio. Come on, I�
��ll help you pack it up.”

  As they moved through the cottage, Shane in the lead, carrying the box and trying to keep it from bonking its big, unwieldy corners on the walls, he talked about the painting, warned her that it might still be tacky in some places, that it had taken him longer than he’d expected, merely spending words, almost nervously filling the quiet morning air. She followed, nodding, glancing around idly.

  In the stuffy heat of the studio, Shane unplugged the fan and pushed it aside. Thankfully, the matte painting was mostly dry now, barely tacky even where the paint was thickest. Christiana took one cursory look at it, pressed her lips together and nodded. She held the box while Shane fished out the foam corner grips and began to fit them onto the corners of the painting.

  “This where you do all your work?” Christiana asked, turning to look around the room.

  “Yes. I like it. It’s small, but it’s all I need.”

  “Sure is a big change from the corporate studio in New York, isn’t it?”

  “I always preferred my own space, even then. I sort of defined it and made it my own. The art table came from there, and so did my Escher quote, the one hanging over the easel…” Shane turned to indicate the hand-painted quote and saw Christiana frowning at the easel, her hand cupping her chin. “Oh, that,” he said, a little uncomfortably. Christiana didn’t look up; she continued to study the painting of the manor house, the look on her face dark and inscrutable. Shane finished packing the matte painting into the box and sealed it. “Well, that’s that. I’ll help you get it down to the van.”

  Christiana spoke without looking up, “You painted this?”

  “Yeah. I’m… still working on it.”

  “Who’s it for?”

  Shane shuffled his feet a little. For some reason he didn’t like the way Christiana was looking at the painting. “I, uh… it’s not for anyone. It’s just mine.”