She paused before getting in the car.
“It was nice to spend some time with you,” she said.
“It was,” I agreed, a little too cheerfully.
There was a long moment where she looked at me. I took a step back, waving.
“Catch you around,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “Sure.”
•
Classes started again. I was in two plays this semester, plus a staged reading, so things got busy and I didn’t see much of Anna in between the demands of work and school. A few times I went down to the bar to talk to her, and she always seemed glad to see me.
Clementine approached me there on a Saturday night.
We’d never really talked before. She was always too busy spinning records and keeping the light show going. That homemade, cobbled-together system had its idiosyncrasies. The light never seemed to reach certain corners. But Clementine knew how to use it, knew how to turn the whole place into a fairyland full of sparkle and madness.
She was taking a break, giving someone else a chance to handle the music. I came up beside her and she looked at me, silently, as always. I never had seen her smile.
She said, “I like your friend Anna.”
I was surprised. These were perhaps the first words she’d ever spoken directly to me. I glanced over at her. She was watching Anna behind the bar.
I did see her smile then, for the first time, a small, secretive smile.
•
A few days later, Anna called because her car had broken down and she wanted me to drive her to work at the bar. We always did favors for each other. I said, “So when should I come pick you up?”
“Oh, you don’t need to. I have a friend picking me up.”
There was something odd about the way she said it. I didn’t know quite what to make of it. Usually we analyzed her dates and relationships at length.
So, it was a little bit snoopy of me, to come in later that night and stay till closing time. Something wasn’t right.
When she left, I trailed out the door after her, unobtrusively. I stood out in the smokers’ corner, pretending to have a last cigarette before going home.
I watched her get on the motorcycle behind the woman who looked so much like Clementine.
Was that who Anna was sleeping with?
•
I couldn’t help but ask the next day when I ran into her at lunch.
I said, “Hey, so you’ve gotten to know that woman from the beach?” as I set down my tray beside hers on the table.
She said, popping her yogurt open, “She has a lot of interesting things to say.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “About?”
“Magic,” she said, and blushed.
“Is she teaching you magic?” I teased.
But her face was serious as she shook her head. “No. Her kind of magic can’t be taught.”
“You’re serious?” I knew Anna was crazy for this sort of thing: dragons and unicorns and wizards. Not enough to believe in any of it.
“There’s more,” she said. “Have you ever seen Diana doing anything odd?”
“Odd how?” There was still incredulity in my voice.
Her lips firmed and she shook her head. “Never mind.”
“Look,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but don’t let that woman scam you.”
Familiar Anna looked at me with something new in her eyes.
She said, “Do you think Diana is a good person?”
That made me blink. “Why would you ask that?”
“I heard some things.”
“Like what?”
“Do you think she would do something really bad?”
I leaned forward, exasperated. “What are you trying to get at?”
But instead of explaining, she said, “Do you know that there have been seals sighted in Lake Michigan?”
I scoffed. “Right. And some whales too.”
“I looked it up,” she said. “No photos, but three or four sightings, all in the upper peninsula. Do you know what a selkie is?”
At my head shake, she explained, “They’re people who can turn into seals. According to lore, when they change into human, it’s a matter of stepping out of their sealskin, which they have to hide somewhere. What if I told you that Clementine is one, and that the only reason that she stays with Diana is because she has to, because Diana has her skin hidden somewhere in the Hunt?”
“I’d think you were working on a book.”
“But I’m not.”
“All right. So let’s posit that Diana has somehow gotten Clementine’s skin…”
“Melissandra says Diana’s a sorceress, she stole it away by magic. Someone has to make her give it back. But she can’t be killed, Melissandra says, unless it’s with an object that Diana owns. It’s a geas or something.”
I couldn’t help rolling my eyes, I swear I couldn’t.
Anna’s face closed. Her eyes went down to the table. “I need to get to class.”
•
The next day I went down to the Hunt, on one of Anna’s days off. I wanted to watch Diana, to see if there was something behind all of this, or if it was all just Anna’s fevered imagination.
I ordered a drink from Diana. She said, “Haven’t seen you much lately.”
I shrugged. “How’s Anna working out?”
“I know she’s your friend, but she’s…” Diana hesitated. “There’s something off about her.”
I wanted to say, More off than believing you’re a sorceress who’s stolen a selkie’s skin? But I didn’t need to tell her that. Anna was harmless, even with weird ideas stuffed in her head.
“I think she stole some things,” Diana said. “Tell her to bring them back and all’s forgiven.”
Had Anna been rummaging around in an insane search for a mythical seal skin? But I just nodded, and settled back to observe the bar.
I’d never really watched Diana before. The only time she had any expression was when she was watching Clementine.
Doting and fond and desperate, all at once.
Who was the woman pursuing Anna and what was her connection to Clementine?
I finally realized what that expression was on Diana’s face. I’d seen it before, when Anna was looking at me, too tired or unaware to hide it.
That was when Anna came in with the spear gun.
•
I don’t know that people would have noticed so quickly without Clementine. She must have been watching, knowing Anna was coming. The moment the door swung open, the Pointer Girls stopped telling us how excited they were, the lights swiveled in two directions, picturing out Anna at the door and across the room, Diana at the bar.
They stared at each long enough for me to take a breath.
Anna stepped forward, wearing the red dress. Its light leaped up to meet that of the mirror ball. Bits of bloody light skated over the faces of the crowd and glinted on the spear, with its wicked, sharp vanes.
She said to Diana, “You had no right to enslave Clementine.”
Diana’s face worked. She cast a look at her lover, who stood in the booth, her face impassive and blank as the mirror’s absence, reflecting nothing.
Anna took three more steps. “You need to let her go.”
“I can’t,” Diana said.
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
Dian’s expression hardened. “Won’t.”
I was standing halfway between them. I started towards Anna.
She waved me back with the spear gun. “Don’t interfere, Arturo.”
“You don’t want to do this,” I said. “Think of all the trouble it’ll cause. You’re throwing your life away on a crazy story someone’s spun you.”
Her face was untroubled. “The selkies will protect me. They can’t come in the bar, but I can act for them.”
“They lie,” Diana said. “They twist and mislead, the fae.” She was staring at Clementine.
Clementine said, “I will be freed.”
“Without your skin?” Diana said softly. “Life with me is less preferable than wandering the earth looking for it?”
“Yes.”
I edged closer and closer to Anna. I was shaking, my heart pounding. There’s something about a gun, even one without bullets, that raises the tension level in a room.
She noticed me even as I reached for her.
We grappled desperately for a moment while everyone screamed. I don’t know which of us pulled the trigger, but the spear didn’t hit Diana when it launched. It went wild, the sound bright and brittle in the room, and then the enormous mirror ball exploded as the spear shattered it.
Everyone screamed. Shards bounced with a ting off the silver guitar and chipped a dimple in the Virgin Mary’s cheek. A luchador mask was torn from the wall, landed in a heap atop a pile of shards.
Something previously contained in the mirror ball’s heart fell, a dark armload of folds that made Clementine’s face light as she ran to it.
Diana said, hoarsely, “Clemmie, no.”
Clementine didn’t even look back as she slung it around her shoulders and went to the door.
Anna walked toward me, shards of mirror crunching beneath her feet. She didn’t seem to notice that she still had the gun in her hand, she was looking at me so intently. Watching my face for some sign that was lacking, apparently.
She said, “They promised me something if I did this thing for them.”
I asked, “What did they promise you?”
“They promised me you. But that’s not going to happen, is it?”
I shook my head.
“And it’s not because you like some other girl, some other woman better.”
It wasn’t a question, but I shook my head anyway.
She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. She said, “Because you don’t like women.”
“I like women,” I said. “But not like that.”
We’d been coming to this moment for so long.
Somehow I had always thought we could avoid it. I’d skirted around its edges, hiding in half-lies and omissions.
She looked back over her shoulder, at Diana, who was standing in front of Clementine’s booth, looking at it. The bar owner looked old. And tired. Anna turned and walked away from me, went to Diana. She said something to her I didn’t hear, and Diana said something in reply.
Sometimes you love someone and they don’t love you back. Or they don’t love you the way you want them to, even though every cell in your body knows they’re the right one for you. Maybe you do what Anna did for so long, waiting even though you know, deep down, it’ll never come. Or maybe you do what Diana did, taking love by what might be trickery, might be force.
You’d think it would have drawn Diana and Anna together, that frustration. That sorrow.
And those of us that are loved? We know. Sometimes we care.
Sometimes we don’t.
Sometimes we ride away on a motorcycle, rumbling down a moonlit road, headed back up to Lake Michigan. Hair whipping back in the wind, with that smile I’d never seen before tonight on her face. Never looking back at all.
•
Selected Program Notes from the Retro- spective
Exhibition of
Theresa Rosenberg Latimer
Kenneth Schneyer
1. Three Women (1978)
Oil on canvas, 30 x 40”
Detroit Institute of Art
Detroit, Michigan
Latimer painted Three Women while still a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. It is the earliest completed painting that displays the hyperrealism characterizing the first period of her work.
Three young women sit close together on a park bench in autumn. Two hold hands, while the third has her hand on the knee of the center figure. Their expressions are serious, almost stern, as if they resent the artist’s presumption in portraying them.
At this stage of her career, Latimer was still experimenting with issues of compositional balance. The brightness of the orange trees offsets the dour colors of the models’ clothes; the tilt of the models’ heads and the orientation of their legs impel the viewer to look at the trees rather than at them. It as if the viewer is being pushed away from people and towards nature.
None of these models appears in any of Latimer’s later work. Presumably they were fellow RISD students. Latimer herself appears in early works of others who were at RISD at the time, including A. C. Stahl and J. J. Kramer.
Discussion questions:
a. Use the magnifying lens provided to examine the hairs on the models’ arms, the loose fibers in their sweaters, and the veins in the leaves. Many details in a Latimer painting are not visible to those who view the work at ordinary distances. Why do you think she inserted such typically invisible minutiae? What effect do they have on your experience of the painting?
•
19. Self-Portrait with Surrogates (1984)
Oil on canvas, 51 x 771⁄4”
Rhode Island School of Design Museum
Providence, Rhode Island
The first of Latimer’s paintings to draw critical attention, Self-Portrait with Surrogates portrays the notorious child abuse and murder case of the Wilson family, which dominated the Rhode Island news media at the time. Seven-year-old Lisa Wilson, clad only in underwear and displaying both old scars and fresh cuts, is being beaten with an electrical extension cord wielded by her father, while her mother holds her in place. None of the figures displays any emotion; it is as if they are spectators at the event.
The details, again in the hyperrealist style, closely match those of the Wilson case. The family home is accurately depicted, and the scars on Lisa Wilson’s body correspond with photographs in the court file.
Discussion questions:
a. The composition and live-action flavor of this work resemble 18th- and 19th-century patriotic or polemical depictions of battles and famous events; David’s The Death of Socrates (1787) (Fig. 5) is a clear influence. Why does Latimer employ such devices in a portrayal of domestic violence? Does it alter your perception of what you are “really” seeing?
b. Some biographers associate the painting’s title with the emotional and physical abuse Latimer herself experienced as a child. Is there anything in the picture itself to show that this is really a “self portrait?”
c. Does the fact that Latimer’s parents were living when she painted this work alter the way you perceive it?
•
34. Magda #4 (1989)
Oil on poplar wood, 30 x 21”
Private collection
Sometimes called “Devotion” by critics, this nude is the earliest extant work featuring Magda Ridley Meszaros (1963-2023), Latimer’s favorite model and later her wife. The lushness of the flesh and the rosiness of the skin are reminiscent of Renoir’s paintings of Aline Charigot (see, e.g., The Large Bathers (1887) (Fig. 8)). Latimer maintains microscopic hyperrealism even as she employs radiating brushstrokes which emanate from the model, as if Meszaros is the source of reality itself.
Discussion questions:
a. The materials and dimensions of this painting duplicate those of Da Vinci’s La Gioconda (c. 1503-1519) (Fig. 17). Is this merely a compositional joke or homage by Latimer? How does it change the way you see the painting?
b. Most biographers agree that Latimer and Meszaros were already lovers by the time this work was completed. Is this apparent from the composition or technique? From the pose of the model? As you proceed through the exhibit, note similarities and differences between this and other portrayals of Meszaros over the next 34 years.
•
48. Conjuring (1993)
Acrylic on masonite, 48 x 96”
Private collection
Her largest composition and only known landscape, Conjuring appeared during a fallow period in Latimer’s work. In 1992 and 1993 she completed only three paintings.
The scene is an overcast day in a valley in northern New Hampshire. Although it is
summer, the foliage on the hills contains much grey and purple, conveying a wintery feel. While Latimer renders exacting details in rocks, trees, even blades of grass, in this work she also employs a forced monotony in the brushwork; the shape of every stroke is practically identical to every other.
In the precise center of the composition, wearing baggy khaki clothing, Magda Ridley Meszaros walks along an empty dirt road, recognizable only under a magnifying lens. She does not appear to be aware of the artist.
Discussion questions:
a. The aforementioned slack period in Latimer’s work coincided with several crises in her life: her only interval of estrangement from Magda Meszaros, precipitated by parental opposition to their relationship; the death by drug overdose of her close friend, the singer Pamela Enoch (1965-1993); and Latimer’s own life-threatening illness. Her hyperrealist period ends with this painting. Can we see these life crises in this composition? Is there any hint of Latimer’s coming change in style?
•
49. Performance (1994)
Acrylic on canvas, 32 x 41”
National Portrait Gallery,
Washington, D.C.
Generally regarded as one of the outstanding memorial portraits of the 20th century, Performance is also the first painting of Latimer’s “highlight” period, which occupied the rest of her career.
Latimer was fascinated by the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1980-1994), which sharply enhanced the clarity and brightness of Michelangelo’s colors. Although some still doubt whether the restoration reflected the artist’s intentions, Latimer was most interested in the side-by-side contrast between the pre- and post-restoration appearance of the frescoes (see “before” and “after” pictures of The Creation of Adam (figs. 11 and 12)). In one of her diaries, she wrote:
They stripped away the hurts and filth of five centuries and released the purity within. It’s like looking at one of the Platonic forms—beneath the battered, mundane person, the person we see in everyday life, is the true person—the soul, maybe, or the heart. Of course it looks less “real” to us—we’re so used to the violence and degradation imposed on us by the world that we’re unprepared for ourselves without it.
Heiresses of Russ 2014 Page 22
